Surgery is the only treatment method that can lead to a cure, but only people with very early stage disease—a small minority of patients—have long-term survival. Mesothelioma is usually incurable, so treatment efforts are designed to control the accumulation of fluids (effusion) as well as pain and other symptoms.
There are a large number of clinical trials investigating aggressive radiation therapy and chemotherapy programs.
Chemotherapy Extensive attempts have been made to discover chemotherapeutic agents that
have some effectiveness against this tumor . Many drugs have been tested, but only a few have modest activity. Doxorubicin , cyclophosphamide and cisplatin are active, and so are 5-azacytidine, 5-fluorouracil and high-dose methotrexate with leucovorin rescue.
Response rates to combinations of chemotherapy drugs may be higher. Recent studies evaluating combinations containing doxorubicin indicate that this drug may be an important part of all combinations.
Radiation The usefulness of radiation therapy is difficult to define. The natural history of these
tumors varies and interpretation of the effects after treatment is difficult, both because of chronic shadows on the chest x-ray before and after treatment and because so few patients have been treated with this method. Early research did suggest some benefit from radiation therapy.
