Stephen Levin

Cohen, Placitella and Roth

Date:

Duration: 2:50

Stephen Levin lists several possible treatments for mesothelioma, including chemotherapy and surgery.

Video Transcript

Steven Levine: This is Stephen Levine. I'm Medical Director of the Mount Sinai Irving Selikoff Center for Occupational and Environmental Medicine.

There are several approaches to the treatment of mesothelioma. There is standard chemotherapy, which has not proven to be very effective against this particular type of tumor. However, there are some individuals who obtain a response, with some lengthening of life and some shrinking of the tumor, with these standard chemotherapy approaches. The difficulty with these treatments is that they often produce side effects including fatigue, nausea, and hair loss. Because they are not so effective, many have chosen not to use this approach.

The second main approach to the treatment of mesothelioma is surgery. There have been surgical approaches that involve removing not only the lung but also the lining of the lung, the lining of the rib cage, and the diaphragm. This is an extensive surgery. But in the hands of an experienced surgeon, such as can be found at Harvard's surgical program and at the Sloan-Kettering Memorial Cancer Center, there have been reports of individuals who have lived over five years after surgery. This is a significant finding, and although most people have not gone through the surgical procedure with resulting cure, certainly there have been some cures of the disease.

More recently there has been a new chemotherapy approach, and that is known as Alimta. It is a combination chemotherapy approach. Most importantly, individuals who have been treated with this combination of drugs have experienced a real decrease in their symptoms, whether the symptoms are fatigue, shortness of breath, or chest pain. And that is very important to the.

Quality of life that people have remaining to them, once people are diagnosed with mesothelioma.

There also is evidence that survival for at least a few months longer than would occur without treatment has been observed in people who are on this course of therapy. When the average length of life after diagnosis is only thirteen months, extension of life by even three months - especially if those three months are relatively symptom-free or with reduced symptoms - is a significant development.