Peritoneal mesothelioma is a very rare type of cancer. About 300 cases are discovered in the United States yearly, it is about 30 percent of all mesothelioma cases.
Nature of Peritoneal Mesothelioma
Peritoneal mesothelioma affects the abdominal lining or the peritoneum that is why it is called abdominal mesothelioma. This membrane supports and covers the organs of the abdomen. The peritoneum is made of two parts, the visceral and parietal peritoneum. The visceral peritoneum covers theinternal organs and covers just about all of the outer layer of the intestinaltract. Covering the abdominal cavity is the parietal peritoneum. Cells in these linings make a fluid that allows organs to rub against one another. The cells of the mesothelium are for creating fluid but the cancer causes them to produce more than what is needed, causing a buildup of extra fluid in the abdominal cavity. Because pleural mesothelioma is more common and usually spreads to the peritoneal cavity, it should be determined if pleural mesothelioma is the primary cancer.
Causes of Peritoneal Mesothelioma
If asbestos fibers are breathed or swallowed, sometimes they can end up in mesothelium of the peritoneum and become embedded there. In time, the fibers cause irregularities in the cells there that develop become cancerous -this is called peritoneal mesothelioma. Like all other types of mesothelioma, peritoneal mesothelioma usually has a long latency period. It usually takes years or even decades after asbestos exposure for the cancer to be discovered, but not all the time. Mesothelioma is extremely rare and only about 2500 cases a year are diagnosed in the United States. Of these, only 17 percent begin in the peritoneum.
Treatment of Mesothelioma
Treatments vary and depend on different issues, like the stages of the disease, your overall health, the opinion of your doctors and what you choose as treatment. There are three types of peritoneal mesothelioma treatment:
1. Palliative therapies
These treatments typically include pain medication and surgeries to remove fluid or bulky tumors. Peritoneal mesothelioma is always deadly. Palliative treatments are meanly to help the patient with pain and discomfort however they do not do anything to cure or slow the disease.
2. Curative therapies
There is no cure for peritoneal mesothelioma. Curative treatments are not meant to stop the disease. They are meant to slow the progress of the disease and help the patients live longer. Curative treatments for mesothelioma are the same as most other cancers and include surgery to remove tumors and cancerous tissues, chemotherapy, and radiation.
3. Experimental therapies
These are new treatments that are being tried and tested in clinical trials. Patients have to have certain requirements to be involved in these clinical trials. Until now, no one has found a cure for the disease but therapies offer hope that a cure may not be far away. Some of the most promising clinical trial areimmunotherapy, photodynamic therapy, anti-angiogenesis therapy and gene therapy.
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