Symptoms of Mesothelioma

Pleural mesothelioma grows inside the chest cavity and sometimes it can attack the lungs. The metastasizing process can effect many other organs, including the brain, and in a high percentage of cases metastatic localizations are already present. Before the appearance of symptoms, the tumor generally grows at a very slow rate, and the first manifestations of its presence are very non specific. The most common symptom is a persistent pain in the chest region. In addition to feeling pain, some patients can also experience more or less severe difficulty in breathing (dyspnea). The latter is caused by a condition referred to as pleural effusion, which consists in the accumulation of fluid in the space between the two layers of the pleura. The presence of such excess fluid causes lungs to move with less ease during respiration. Other common symptoms of pleural mesothelioma are also found in many other malignant neoplasms: coughing, weight loss and fever (often just febricula). Although a chest x-ray is the first step in the diagnosis of this disease, a CAT scan is needed to determine how much the illness has spread. The next logical step in the diagnosis of pleural mesothelioma is to perform a thoracoscopy, when possible. This exam allows physicians to view the tumor directly, and to determine its exact local extension and to conduct a biopsy, vital in determining the exact histological type of MMe. Currently, there are no serum markers able to formulate a diagnosis of Mme. According to some researchers, the presence of high levels of ialuronic acid in the blood can be useful in differentiating between mesothelioma and other types of tumor, and its dosage can be repeated during and after the treatment, in order to evaluate its effectiveness.

From the time symptoms appear, the survival rate among patients diagnosed with pleural mesothelioma is17 months. Only 10% of patients experience a survival rate of 3 years, and only 5% will live 5 years (out of 100 patients diagnosed with pleural MMe at a given time, only 10 of them will still be alive after 5 years. That number is destined to decrease to 5 after a period of 5 more years).