Mesothelioma Patients - 3

As more and more people are diagnosed with mesothelioma, the lawsuits against these corporations are increasing as well. Mesothelioma litigation started increasing in the late 1900s as all the people who had worked with asbestos since its entrance into industry in the late 1880s started displaying the symptoms. Today, it has reached its peak as not only workers, but even their families are being diagnosed with this condition. Billions and billions of dollars are being generated in the lawsuits that are being filed against these companies. Mesothelioma litigation has become a branch of legal specialization in itself. There are mesothelioma law firms and mesothelioma attorneys and lawyers who use their legal expertise in guiding mesothelioma patients to sue companies or individuals for the deliberate damage caused by asbestos exposure. This is a very lengthy and tedious process and often takes years and years to resolve since mesothelioma is such a delayed condition. Obviously the companies do not like being incriminated in such cases and they use their expansive pool of both financial and legal resources to fight the cases. So if you want to take legal action, do not delay. Make sure you get a competent mesothelioma law firm and begin your crusade.

Since mesothelioma is largely incurable, there are many other forms of palliative treatment that mesothelioma patients can opt for. These include aromatherapy, acupuncture, meditation and yoga. While these do not cure you of the condition, they keep you both physically and mentally happy. Another important thing is to eat well. Cancer treatments take a lot out of you and there are many weakening side effects as well. Thus you must have a proper balanced diet, which replenishes your body with all the important nutrients like proteins, vitamins and so on. Also make sure that you do not eat very oily and rich food, because this might lead to diarrhea and other digestive problems.

Do not let yourself succumb to the circumstances, no matter how painful they maybe. The latter is an all important thing that comes into play if you have a terminal condition. While expressions like "you must be brave" and "always think positive" sound clichéd and are very easy to say, it also holds true that having a strong personality and will power does indeed push away the inevitable end. Even if you get the best medicine and treatment available, falling prone to depression will knock away half of your remaining years as well. It has been scientifically proven that mesothelioma patients who have undergone both physical and mental cures have had longer life spans than those who have only gone in for medication.

Mesothelioma Patients - 2

By now you must be certainly asking about the ways that this deadly condition can be cured. Well, to cut a long story short, there is no permanent and standardized cure for mesothelioma, and the sole reason for this is the fact that mesothelioma cannot be detected before decades of it has entered into your system. Also, many of the symptoms that are atypical of mesothelioma are not solely mesothelioma centric. Symptoms like shortness of breath, blood in the sputum, pleurisies or fluid in the lungs and so on. All these symptoms can be mistaken for a thousand other conditions. Of course, different forms of mesothelioma have their own specific symptoms, but again, most of them are not mesothelioma centric. For treatment, there is the usual stock of chemotherapy as well as radiation. Surgery is usually performed in the most drastic of situations, but is not that effective as the other two treatments mentioned. With chemotherapy and radiation there is a much higher incidence of being able to increase the patient’s lifespan by five years or more. With surgery that extension rate is much less. Again, there are other treatment methods like immunotherapy that has been making progress in this field as well.

Dr. Paul Sugarbaker has been a pioneer in the field of mesothelioma treatment for years. He has evolved new methods of surgery and ways of treating the carcinogenic cells by using modes of radiation and chemotherapy. He has been able to make immense progress in a field that had once been dominated by hopelessness and despair. He developed these methods at the Washington Cancer Institute. Doctors have also been searching for methods through which the condition can be detected at a much earlier stage, that is, a stage where the mutations will not have taken place yet. Asbestos takes over one’s DNA. Now you know why mesothelioma is rightly called the scourge of the 21st century…

Next comes the question of exposure. Mesothelioma was a rare cancer which is unfortunately losing its position as one, as day by day more and more people are revealed to be suffering from the condition. So how are such staggering numbers of people becoming exposed to such a deadly mineral? And if this mineral is airborne, why is every single person in this world not mesotheliomic by now? To answer these questions, let me take you back into time as history will reveal how many people fell prey to such atrocities and perhaps it is then that you will realize that human atrocities extend far beyond wars and genocide. Veiled by civilization, people and corporations have committed many crimes for materialistic reasons.

Mesothelioma Patients - 1

When we think of tragedy what is the first thing that comes to our mind? For over 90 percent of people all over the world, it is death. Yes, we are all scared of dying, and especially a painful death. In the movie, The Bucket List, Morgan Freeman, one of the main characters, says that when people are asked as to whether they want to know the date of their death in advance, most of them said that they did not want to know. So that is another factor, none of us want to know the day or our death in advance. But what happens if you are unlucky enough to know the fact that your days are, in fact, numbered? What happens then? It probably makes you braver than ever. This is because you do not have to live the rest of your days in fear anymore. Facing the prospect of death can suddenly make one brave. To believe that, look around you and observe the thousands of people who are terminally ill and are still enjoying every moment of whatever they have left.

That brings us to another element here. What terminal illnesses have you heard of? The common names are cancer, AIDS, leukemia, etc. Hearing these names probably fill you with a sense of dread. However, the world has more in store for us human beings. Welcome to the newest plague or scourge of the modern world. This is not AIDS. It is mesothelioma. The name probably does not strike a bell among all the "famous" diseases that you have heard of. Let us not call them diseases anymore. It sounds crude. These are all conditions that thousands of people suffer from. So, what IS mesothelioma, you may ask? And it isn’t even that widespread, so how can it pose a great threat to humankind at large? There is an answer to all of these questions.

First, mesothelioma is a kind of aggressive cancer that affects people who have been exposed to asbestos for extended periods of time, spanning years and decades. Asbestos fibers enter the body and penetrate the vital lining of various organs including the lungs, the cardiac as well as the abdominal cavities. These fibers penetrate the body, undergo genetic mutations and form new mutated cells which slowly metastasize or spread all over the body. Thus mesothelioma patients have asbestos fibers mingled within their cellular structure. And here you were thinking that genetic mutations only occur to young college kids in comic books who become super heroes after undergoing genetic mutation. This is not the Spiderman story. It is the story of thousands and thousands of people who have been subjected to one of the biggest atrocities in human history, but more of that later. There are three types of mesothelioma that affect people: Pleural (lung), Peritoneal (abdominal) and Pericardial (cardiac cavity) mesothelioma. Of these three, most patients usually suffer from the pleural because asbestos particles are usually airborne and enter the system while breathing. This cancer is aggressive, but has a very slow and extended gestation period.

2011 Mesothelioma

The symptoms of mesothelioma usually show themselves twenty to fifty years after their exposure to asbestos. Basically the cancer feeds into the system for decades before rearing up its ugly head. Basically children whose parents were exposed to asbestos are becoming afflicted in their late adulthood. Another thing that you should know is the fact that it is extremely contagious, in the sense that even if you have prolonged contact with a person who in turn has had a sustained exposure to asbestos, then you might contract it too. Technically speaking, the person who regularly does the laundry for a mesothelioma patient might contract it too. But as I said, the exposure has to be sustained over a long period of time.

To be continued.....

Effects of Mesothelioma Cancer

A layer made up of specialized cells or membrane called mesothelium covers the most of the internal organs. There are two layers of cells in mesothelium. Organs are surrounded by the first one which is surrounded by the second thick layer. Between these two layer a lubricating fluid is concealed which is produced by the membrane itself. This lubricant allows the organs to move smoothly against adjacent organs and structures (for example the expansion and contraction of lungs, beating of the heart etc…

Mesothelioma has different names according to the different location in the body. One of all those is peritoneum which covers most of the organs in the abdominal cavity. Pleura is the membrane which surrounds the lungs and lines the wall of the chest cavity and tissue called as Pericardium covers and protects the heart.

In a disease known as Mesothelioma or the cancer of the mesothelioma, cells become abnormal and divide enormously and with out any order leading to the development of tumors. The tumors of the mesothelial cells can be non cancerous i.e. benign or cancerous i.e. malignant. As nearly all mesothelial tumors are malignant, cancerous mesothelioma is often just referred to as mesothelioma. They can spread and damage nearby tissues and organs too. Therefore the cancer cells may also metastasize from their parent location to other parts of the body.

The lining or membranes of certain large cavities in the body are get affected by the malignant 2011 Mesothelioma. Some major organs in the body such as heart, lungs, abdomen and others are housed by these cavities, known as the serious cavities.

Malignant mesothelioma undertakes 3 forms.

1) Peritoneal Mesothelioma: It is in the Peritoneum or membrane surrounding the abdomen.
2) Pericardial Mesothelioma: It is in the Pericardium or lining surrounding the heart.
3) Pleural Mesothelioma: This the most common form of malignant mesothelioma which affects the lining of the lung cavity.

Things to know about Mesothelioma diagnosis

2011 Mesothelioma

If the chest x-ray is suggesting malignant mesothelioma, it seems that more analysis will be ordered, particularly if reimbursement may be required.

The analysis may involve further imaging studies, blood tests, bone scans, and lung-function tests, with more persistent procedures like thoracentesis, thoracoscopy, pleuroscopy or lung biopsy. This is a standard diagnosis of mesothelioma.

Diagnosis of mesothelioma can be done through chest x-ray. The common abnormalities observed on chest x-ray of patients with malignant mesothelioma are pleural effusion that is a collection of fluid in the space between the 2 layers of the pleura, or sometimes it is known as pleural thickening.

Distinct from the lung cancer, there’s no relation between smoking and mesothelioma. Malignancies concerning mesothelial cells in these spread cavities are called as malignant mesothelioma that may be contained or spread. The word Mesothelioma describes a cancerous tumor which involves the mesothelial cells of an organ, normally the lungs, heart, or abdominal organs.

Mesothelioma symptoms may not show until 20 to 50 years after asbestos exposure. It is really crucial to diagnose mesothelioma, since its symptoms are much parallel to those of other diseases. A history of asbestos exposure may raise medical suspicion for mesothelioma.

A physical inspection is conducted, prior to chest X-ray and also lung function examination. The X-ray may expose pleural thickening normally observed after asbestos exposure if mesothelioma diagnosis is done.
Options of treatments, a mesothelioma diagnosis for the malignant mesothelioma management includes surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, and multimodality treatment. Surgery in patients with disease limited to the pleural space is inexpensive.

A more extensive procedure that has a higher mortality rate is known as extrapleural pneomunectomy. Currently, the mortality rate has been decreased up to 3.8%. It includes analysis of the parietal pleura; splitting of the pulmonary vessels; and en bloc resection of the lung, pleura, pericardium, and diaphragm prior to reconstruction. It gives the maximum local control since it takes away the whole pleural sac together with the lung parenchyma.

The two surgical procedures employed are pleurectomy with decortication and extrapleural pneumonectomy.

Mesothelioma diagnosis may be daunting and may fright many individuals, except mesothelioma diagnosis can bestow you a fighting chance if can be diagnose in advance. Therefore make yourself a help if you believe that what you are undergoing from and had worked in an asbestos associated place of work.

The intention to such analysis in mesothelioma diagnosis is to make sure and to verify the kind of mesothelioma, to ‘stage’ the disease that is to measure how severe it is, and therefore to evaluate whether the disease is operable

Top 20 Ways To Diagnose 2011 Mesothelioma

1. One can start by reviewing the patient’s medical history. If he has a history of being exposed to asbestos, he is at greater risk for 2011 Mesothelioma.
2. A physical examination is a must.
3. The Cytology procedure can be effective in detecting if abnormal cell are present in the large amount of fluid. For pleural fluid, it is done with a pleural tap or chest drain, in ascites it is done with an ascitic drain, or paracentesis.
4. A biopsy is performed, to confirm the diagnosis. A sample of tissue is removed and observed under the microscope.
5. Imaging techniques have proved very effective in diagnosing Mesothelioma. For example, there is the X-ray, which reveals the fluid build-up, limited to either the right (60%) or left (40%) lung. Sometimes, a mass may be observed.
6. Computed Tomography (CT) scans are performed to define the pleural effusion, pleural thickening, pleural calcification, thickening of interlobular fissures, and possible chest wall invasion.
7. Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is performed to note the extent of the tumor, before aggressive treatment is carried out. These can provide images in multiple planes, so can identify tumors better. They are more accurate in checking the enlargement of the mediastinal lymph nodes, and the clear diaphragmatic surface.
8. Positron Emission Tomography (PET) is used to diagnose and evaluate Mesothelioma. However, they tend to be more expensive, and are usually not covered under insurance.
9. Integrated CT/PET imaging determines surgical eligibility in Mesothelioma cases. The benefits of CT and PET scans are combined into a single scan, thus the stage is accurately determined.
10. A needle biopsy of the mass can be made.
11. The removal and examination of the fluid surrounding the lung may be used to determine and diagnose the presence of Mesothelioma.
12. Open pleural biopsy is recommended as a diagnostic procedure – the surgeon makes a small incision through the chest wall, inserts a thin, lighted tube (thoracoscope) into the chest between two ribs. A sample tissue is removed, to be reviewed under a microscope.
13. Peritoneal biopsy is another method – the doctor will make a small incision in the abdomen. A peritoneoscope is inserted into the abdominal cavity.
14. Video Assisted Thoracoscopic Surgery (VATS) is widely used today. It is a minimally invasive procedure, that makes biopsies of the pleural lining, masses, nodules and pleural fluid.
15. Pleurodesis (talc) for pleural effusions can be carried out.
16. Thoracentesis is a pdiagnostic rocedure by which the doctor puts a needle into your chest, to gently use suction to drain out the accumulated fluid.
17. Peritoneoscopy allows the doctor to look inside the abdomen through a peritoneoscope, which is put into an opening made in your abdomen.
18. During the pathological examination, the tissue is described, and placed in a plastic cassette. It is important to know the patient’s information and history. The cassettes are stored so that the tissue can be preserved permanently. It is processed into a paraffin block, thus the pathologist can slice off thin microscopic sections, which he will stain and study, during the diagnosis.
19. The immunohistochemistry process allows the pathologist to analyze and identify the cell type based on the binding of antibodies to specific components of the cell.
20. Positive markers are looked at.