Mesothelioma is a form of cancer that exhibits an extremely lengthy latency period of 20 to 50 years, as asbestos particles remain trapped in the protective tissues surrounding organs and lead to the slow development of disease. Furthermore, the disease’s symptoms generally remain absent or mimic other less serious conditions until very late, making diagnosis extremely difficult. This all leads to mesothelioma’s characteristically late diagnosis, when it has reached its later stages.

Unfortunately, when mesothelioma reaches its later stages, treatment options become far fewer. This is due to patient weakness and tumor characteristics in late stages. Patients typically cannot withstand the physical demands of surgery and other taxing treatments at this stage. Furthermore, the metastasis, or cancer spreading, which has occurred at the later stages makes it unlikely any curative procedure will have a beneficial impact. In fact, during mesothelioma’s late stages, drastic therapies and treatments may actually decrease a patient’s survival rate.

Palliative Treatments

For these reasons, palliative care often offers mesothelioma patients the best chance at living longer and maximizing their quality of life. Unlike curative procedures, palliative care simply seeks to relieve or prevent cancer symptoms, which can be extremely painful and emotionally difficult. Some of these treatments, including pleurectomy/decortication, a less involved procedure, may be considered both a curative procedure and palliative, depending on the patient’s health and the cancer stage. These patients may have unsuccessfully undergone previous treatments, or their mesothelioma diagnosis may have been given after the cancer has reached a late stage.

Palliative Treatment Surgery

One of the hallmarks of mesothelioma is a buildup of fluid, particularly in the chest. This fluid buildup can be extremely painful for patients and cause difficulty breathing. To remove this fluid, doctors can insert a needle into the chest cavity and draw this accumulated fluid out. After this minimally invasive process, doctors may insert talc or drugs into the cleared chest cavity, causing the linings of the lungs and the chest walls to stick together and seal the open space to prevent future fluid buildup.

This process can also be carried out for this form of cancer present in the abdomen, called peritoneal mesothelioma, or around the heart, known as pericardial mesothelioma. Typically a numbing medication is used beforehand and this treatment may be done either in a hospital or a doctor’s office. Debulking is another palliative procedure used specifically to treat peritoneal mesothelioma which has spread beyond the lining of the abdomen and is impossible to completely remove. Debulking might be done to remove as much of the cancer as possible and can often include removing parts of the intestine.

Other Palliative Procedures

Sometimes these forms of fluid removal do not effectively stop this painful buildup. In these cases, a device known as a shunt may be implanted into the chest to allow fluid to travel from one area of the body to another. A shunt consists of a long, thin tube containing a small pump in the center. It is implanted with one side in the chest cavity and the other ending in the abdominal area. Several times a day, patients then run the pump, moving chest fluid into the abdominal area where it will more likely be absorbed.  Another device implanted by doctors to allow the regular removal of chest or abdominal fluid is a catheter, which consists of a thin, flexible tube. When one end of a catheter is placed in the chest or abdomen, the other end outside of the body can be attached to a special device or bottle to allow fluid to drain out. This device can also be implanted in either a doctor’s office or hospital.