Pleural Mesothelioma is the most common form of mesothelioma. In its malignant form it is caused by exposure to asbestos. When you breath in asbestos fibers in a work environment unprotected the risks can be heightened by smoking as well as exposure to this hazardous material. You can get benign tumors with mesotheliomalioma, but the malignant form is the most common. Pleural Mesothelioma agressively attacks the lungs and the respiratory system of the body. It attacks the cells as well as the lining (known as the pleura) of the lungs. Symptoms can take up to 30 years to present themselves after exposure to asbestos, making it almost impossible to make the connection until it is too late.

The symptoms for malignant pleural mesotheliomalioma, and like peritoneal mesothelioma, they can appear very non-specific and could be put down to a number of common diseases. Without the knowledge that you may have worked with asbestos your doctor could end up testing for a wide range of other diseases such as pneumonia. This wastes time, and time is your enemy with this disease. It is therefore vital that you inform your doctor of your past history of working with asbestos. The doctor can then start running appropriate tests should the symptoms manifest.

Here are some of the symptoms you need to be aware of. They include: persistent or uncontrollable coughing; difficulty swallowing; weight loss; high fever; facial swelling; and coughing up blood. Other patients may also experience shortness of breath, whether they are being active or resting. This can be caused by the thickening of the pleura due to the spread of the tumor. As the pleura thickens lungs function improperly, hence breathing begins to be affected. At this point many patients also experience great chest pain. This is caused by the spread of cancerous cells and the tumor. If the tumor starts to spread, it will affect the chest area as well as the lungs.

Treating pleural mesotheliomalioma is dependant on your doctors knowledge and the findings from his diagnostic tests. Other factors like the patient’s age and medical history play into the success of treatment. Success ultimately depends on how far the cancer has spread; and where the cancer is.

Treatments for Pleural Mesotheliomalioma include:

Surgery: This may entail removing part or all of a lung and surrounding tissue in order to remove the tumor and cancerous cells. Draining the lungs of fluid, simply to make the patient more comfortable is usually performed as well. The extent of surgery will depend largely upon the advancement of the disease.

Chemotherapy: For this procedure, drugs are used to fight the cancer cells and shrink the tumor. Chemo Drugs can be swallowed by mouth if they are in tablet form, or the doctor may give you them by needle directly into a vein or muscle. The drugs travel through the body kill off any cancer cells that they come across.

Radiation Therapy: This is where high energy x-rays are used outside the body or directed to the source internally to shrink the tumor and kills off cancer cells. Internal radiation is preformed through the use of plastic tubing, where the doctor can also administer drugs.