Mesothelioma research is ongoing to understand this cancer better. new treatments are continually being developed and tested in clinical trials.

Mesothelioma is a relatively rare cancer usually caused by exposure to asbestos either directly while working or indirectly such as when washing the clothes of someone working with asbestos.

This cancer is currently not reliably curable by western medicine, but there are a variety of treatments which can often extend the life of someone diagnosed with the disease. one of the major problems with the disease is that accurate diagnosis is often only possible in the late stages. Screening is one approach to this problem, but no standard accepted screening method has yet been developed. this is of course one area in which research is continually being done.

New medical treatments are usually tested using clinical trials. Clinical trials are usually available for mesothelioma, although different trials will have different criteria for acceptance. some trials only accept patients who have had no other treatment where as some only accept patients where all standard treatments have failed. There is a US government website listing current clinical trials, and medical professionals can help point to other sources of this data. Placebos (use of non-active treatments to compare results) are rarely used in clinical trials for this disease, although some trails randomly assign patients to either the standard treatment or the newly developed treatment.

One of the problems in making a legal claim for the disease is that these is currently no scientific method to determine which particular exposure to asbestos actually caused the disease. Severity and length of exposure has little correspondence with likelihood of contracting the disease. this means that workers who have been exposed to asbestos from more than one employer can have no accurate way to determine which exposure actually caused the disease. Patients would be very glad of any research which can help with this problem.

Mesothelioma research is continually developing new treatments and other data about this usually fatal cancer.

For more info see Mesothelioma Treament Options.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010 at 11:07 pm and is filed under Uncategorized, mesothelioma. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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