Surgery Extends Survival for Pleural Mesothelioma Patients

Thoracic surgeon and mesothelioma specialist Dr. Andrea Wolf likes to use the analogy that you don't need a randomized trial to know that skydivers with a parachute generally will fare better than those jumping without one. She compares it to surgery for patients with pleural mesothelioma. You don't need a randomized trial to know that surgical patients will do better than non-surgical ones. "Unfortunately, surgery is still an ongoing controversy with mesothelioma, about whether you should have it. I hear that a lot," Dr. Wolf of Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City told Asbestos.com. "But taking all things into account, we found that surgery didn’t help just a little bit. It helped quite a bit. The truth is, patients can do well with surgery at the right centers today." Wolf is the lead author of a new, retrospective analysis that used a 14,228-patient database to evaluate the effectiveness of surgery and survival rates of mesothelioma patients, independent from other potential predictors. She was joined by four others from Mount Sinai Medical Center, the North Shore-LIJ Cancer Institute and the Hofstra School of Medicine. Extending Survival Time Researchers found that surgery alone was associated with longer survival rates, and that radiation did not improve survival unless it was combined with surgery. The database did not include chemotherapy, which is part of standard treatment today. "There is still too much nihilism around mesothelioma, thinking that there is ...
Source: Asbestos and Mesothelioma News - Category: Environmental Health Authors: Tags: Treatment & Doctors Source Type: news