Sunday, July 13, 2008

Know more about Peritoneal Mesothelioma

Peritoneal mesothelioma is a particular type of mesothelial cancer that occurs at the peritoneal membrane surrounding the abdominal cavity. This particular type of mesothelioma is not a very common one and the normal yearly counts of patients affected by peritoneal mesothelioma are approximately 500 or few more in the United States of America. As this variety of mesothelioma attacks the abdominal region of human body, it is also known as abdominal mesothelioma. Now just like the other typical mesothelioma species, peritoneal one causes abnormal growth of the lining around the abdomen which contains organs like stomach, colon, liver, intestine etc. which can also damage them.

Detection of Peritoneal Mesothelioma

There are certain symptoms that account for the presence of peritoneal mesothelioma in a patient but they are often not very prominent to be detected at the early stage when it can be treated with more efficiency. In fact often most of the patients are diagnosed to have other problems concerning the pelvic area of the body instead of peritoneal mesothelioma. There are quite a number of cases where the patients have been detected to have this cancer coincidentally when they went for a common abdomen x-ray or ultrasonography test. The other external manifestations of this disease include swelling and acute pain in the abdomen along with loss of appetite, weight loss and weakness.

Steps to Treat Peritoneal Mesothelioma

Once someone is diagnosed as a patient of peritoneal mesothelioma, he should consult a specialist physician as soon as possible. They will obviously like to know if the ailing person had any sort of exposure to asbestos or not as this is supposed to be the root cause of all sorts of mesothelioma cancers. Ct scans and X-rays are methods of confirming the affected area. The general way to treat this problem is a surgery which often helps little. The other way out is biopsy that confirms the malignancy of the cancerous cells in the peritoneum. Radiation therapy and chemotherapy are there but to be very curt there is no positive result observed in curing a patient with peritoneal mesothelioma.

Though the medical technology is advancing with a very high pace but the number of curative measures that can be taken to treat a peritoneal mesothelioma patient is very less. In fact it has not yet been detected how exactly the asbestos fibers affect the peritoneal covering of the abdomen. According to some of the researchers the asbestos fibers enter the body of a person through the digestive system while he is in direct contact with asbestos for a long time. Early detection and limited damage can be treated somewhat successfully which can save the lives of a certain percentage of patients.

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