Every year 2500 to 3500 new cases of mesothelioma are detected in the United States. Once a patient gets diagnosed with mesothelioma, the doctor is most likely to talk to him about its prognosis or the course to follow right after so that the outcome of the cancer’s influence on the body can be chalked out. The only way to refrain from poor prognosis is to detect the cancer in its earliest stages.
Mesothelioma is difficult to detect in the early stages because it takes a while for the patient to display symptoms that are associated with the disease. Also the problem is that the symptoms of mesothelioma are like those that we usually associate with much less harmful and everyday illnesses like cough and cold – this makes it difficult for the cancer to be detected and delays the process of prognosis. As a result, the prognosis provided by medical experts is usually of very poor outcome, yet options like surgery, radiation therapy and chemotherapy can always help to delay the rate of deterioration.
Doctors usually address this malignance like all other forms of cancer that is in terms of stages – ranging from stage one to stage four. Once mesothelioma has reached stages three or four, the options for prognosis are not only limited but also far less effective. In the fourth stage of mesothelioma, the health of the patient is such that, the option of surgery is not viable any longer. Treatment of mesothelioma gets more difficult the later diagnosis occurs.
There are several factors that affect the prognosis of a patient suffering from mesothelioma. These include not only the stage of the cancer and the age of the patient but also other factors such as the type of mesothelioma – testicular, pericardial, peritoneal or pleural, the size and location of the tumours, if the tumours can be surgically removed, the amount of fluid in the various cavities of the body, whether or not the patient is a frequent smoker and the like.
Malignant mesothelioma is usually detected in patients beyond 50 years of age though of course there are always exceptions. Sometimes advanced age of patients causes the prognosis to become even more difficult since older individuals already have multiple medical problems. In case of survival rates among mesothelioma patients, references to the five year relative survival rate are often made – which refers to the percentage of patients who live at least five years post cancer diagnosis. According to studies conducted in the United States, approximately 10 percent of patients suffering from mesothelioma fall in this category. This is a great condition since the 1990s as back then, post diagnosis; patients could not even survive till up to one year.
Even though a number of factors like age, overall health, the type of the malignance, the will power of the patient and the like, if a patient wants to battle his disease, he can do so by all means. Exciting stories about patients suffering from mesothelioma and how they have lived for years with the aid of food prognosis continue to surface, bringing hope to weak hearted patients and their near and dear ones.
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