Mesothelioma Procedures

Palliative treatments involve treatment of mesothelioma using procedures that relieve symptoms. It doesn't cure the disease, but helps in dealing with the problem by improving quality of life. It will help in psychological, social, and spiritual needs of patients and their families. It's also called as comfort care, supportive care or symptom management. Mesothelioma is caused due to the exposure of the patient to asbestos. As it's challenging to diagnose this cancerous disease in the early phases, patients and physicians are unaware of early symptoms. Early symptoms are usually mistaken to simple diseases like breathlessness, cough and weight reduction. But with the progression of the disease, the symptoms also become severe. 

Therefore palliative therapy is utilized to provide relief for the pain caused during mesothelioma. It includes various modes of treatment as medications, cognitive and behavioural therapy along with various other procedures to help patients deal with the disease. Palliative therapy is used along with some other forms of traditional treatment for mesothelioma like radiotherapy or chemotherapy. The main goal of palliative therapies is to offer comfort and also to sustain best quality of life for so long as the patient lives. As the extent of pain experienced by the patients is very high, palliation includes traditional pain management programs like painkillers along with stress management, meditation and massage therapy. 

If a patient is in his death bed, this apy brings the traditional roles of the hospice movement. For the patient and his families there's an open line of communication to optimize patient care. A few of the common palliative procedures to treatment mesothelioma are: Chest Tube Drainage and Pleurodesis: This results in irritation inside the layers covering the lungs leading to destruction of space between the layers in order that there's no accumulation of fluid. Various agents like talc or bleomycin may be used for this purpose. The fluid is then drained out from the thoracic cavity with the aid of chest tube. 

Pleuroperitoneal Shunt: This is effective among patients with a trapped lung or when treatment has been inefficient for a patient. To ease pain, physicians inactivate the nerves that pass the message of pain from the affected area to the brain by injecting some alcohol. This is usually done over the course of the surgery or with the aid of CT scan. Palliative radiotherapy! Pain is also reduced using radiotherapy as it kills certain cancer cells that press against nerves. Radiation is usually associated with anti inflammatory as well as pain relievers to increase the relief of the disease. With this kind of treatment about two 3rd of patients have reasonable to maximum improvement and this effects remain for a couple weeks to many months.

Posted in: