- As with any medical treatment, always ask your primary health care provider first...
For decades, our best medical and scientific researchers have pooled their resources and combined their efforts in the fight against cancer. Collectively, we strive to better understand cancer so we can better treat it.
But while this is a noble endeavor, it’s also an especially complicated one. That’s partially because there are so many different types of cancer that it doesn’t even make sense to categorize them all as a single disease.
It’s also because some of those types of cancer are incredibly hard to identify – and even harder to treat.
What Is Peritoneal Mesothelioma?
Most people have heard about mesothelioma, but they may not know about the peritoneal subtype. Mesothelioma itself is a type of cancer that affects the mesothelial lining of various organs. Pleural mesothelioma (which affects the lungs) is the most common, but peritoneal mesothelioma (associated with the stomach and abdomen) is the second most common.
Mesothelioma almost exclusively occurs as a result of exposure to a material known as asbestos. Asbestos was once an inexpensive and highly useful construction material whose dangers were greatly underestimated. Even relatively brief exposure to this material can cause jagged fibers to launch themselves in the mesothelial lining of your organs, eventually spurring the onset of cancer.
Peritoneal mesothelioma affects the lining of the abdomen and can present a wide array of symptoms. It often grows and spreads to affect many areas of the body, and is almost always fatal.
Why Is Peritoneal Mesothelioma Aggressive?
There are a few hypotheses for why mesothelioma is so aggressive, at the gene level. But the bottom line is that peritoneal mesothelioma has a tendency to spread. Rather than being consolidated in a single tumor, peritoneal mesothelioma often affects the entire lining of the abdomen. From there, it continues to reproduce and spread to other areas of the body. While the initial incubation period can take decades, the cancer can spread very quickly once it advances.
Why Is Peritoneal Mesothelioma Hard to Treat?
Why is this type of cancer so hard to treat?
- Time to develop. For starters, peritoneal mesothelioma takes a long time to develop. In fact, it takes 20 or 60 years for symptoms to start presenting themselves. This means the cancer has typically grown and spread extensively before medical treatment providers have an opportunity to begin treating it.
- Symptom ambiguity and misdiagnosis. Symptom ambiguity and misdiagnosis are also significant problems. Peritoneal mesothelioma symptoms can seem quite innocuous; for example, your first symptom may be a simple stomachache. Many people don’t even go to the doctor for symptoms like these, and those that do are usually brushed aside. On top of that, peritoneal mesothelioma is very rare, causing many doctors to fail to consider it as a possibility.
- Spreading. Any cancer that spreads significantly becomes much, much harder to treat. Once peritoneal mesothelioma spreads to other areas of your body, treating it becomes a very difficult exercise.
- Non-localized growth. Peritoneal mesothelioma is also problematic because it doesn’t manifest as a singularly identifiable tumor. Instead, the growth of this disease is more spread out and harder to pinpoint. Surgery may or may not be effective.
- Area sensitivity. Some cancer treatments can be hard on the body, especially when they focus on a complex area, like the abdomen. In some cases, the risks of treatment outweigh the potential benefits, meaning they can’t be reasonably considered.
What Treatment Options Are Available for Peritoneal Mesothelioma?
There are some treatment options available for peritoneal mesothelioma, though not all patients will qualify for all of these treatments. Additionally, depending on when peritoneal mesothelioma was noticed, these treatment methods may or may not be able to stave off the spread of the disease.
- Surgery. Even though peritoneal mesothelioma doesn’t manifest as easily identifiable tumors, surgery is sometimes a viable option. Much of the cancer can be removed this way.
- Chemotherapy. For some patients, chemotherapy is the right strategy. In this treatment method, a solution is injected into the bloodstream with the aim of shrinking the cancerous area or slowing its growth.
- Radiation therapy. Specifically targeted radiation therapy is very rarely applied to peritoneal mesothelioma, due to the sensitivity of the area.
- Supportive treatments. For some patients, the only real option is to provide supportive treatments that relieve pain and increase quality of life as the cancer continues to spread. There are many medications that can reduce pain, address nausea, and minimize fatigue.
- Experimental methods. Some patients may also be interested in pursuing experimental, novel methods of treatment.
Peritoneal mesothelioma is a devastating diagnosis, but we’re fortunate that it’s quite rare. If you believe that you’ve been exposed to asbestos in the past, it’s important to pay close attention to your health, so you can take preventative action early in the course of mesothelioma development.