Radiotherapy No Longer Routine for Mesothelioma Patients

Prophylactic radiotherapy — once offered routinely after invasive procedures for pleural mesothelioma — is an unnecessary treatment for patients, according to the most recent study from the United Kingdom. Results from a large, multicenter clinical trial have shown the treatment — used regularly for almost two decades — does little to prevent chest-wall metastasis that can occur with mesothelioma cancer. “This should be helpful for patients to know if their oncologist is offering something they don’t really need,” clinical oncologist Dr. Neil Bayman, associate medical director at the Christie NHS Foundation Trust in Manchester, England, told The Mesothelioma Center at Asbestos.com. “For most, there is no benefit.” The Journal of Clinical Oncology published the study results in June 2019. Conflicting Evidence in the Past The study involved 375 pleural mesothelioma patients from 54 hospitals who had undergone a chest wall procedure. Those include open-surgical biopsy, video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery, local anesthetic thoracoscopy or chest-drain insertion. Previous studies have shown those procedures can cause tumor-cell seeding at the site and chest wall metastasis in anywhere from two to 50% of patients. The prevailing belief, since the mid-90s, was prophylactic radiotherapy to the site of the chest wall could help prevent that problem. “We’ve always worried that we were sending patients back and forth for treatment they didn’t really need. And tha...
Source: Asbestos and Mesothelioma News - Category: Environmental Health Authors: Source Type: news