A 49-year old woman with pleural mesothelioma contracted through household exposure (her father worked at a shipyard) has experienced what she describes as a miraculous result through chemoembolisation treatments in Frankfurt, Germany. Chemoembilisation involves two treatment steps: first, delivering chemotherapy drug directly to the tumor site. This is not that new and is generally known in this country as “intrapleural” or “intrapertoneal” chemotherapy. It eliminates a lot of the side effects of chemotherapy because the drug is not administered to the whole system; second, the blood vessels supplying the tumor are restricted to decrease the blood supply to the tumor and also to keep the chemotherapy concentrated in the tumor. Chemoembolism has been in use for treatment of liver cancer for some time, but using it to treat a mesothelioma tumor is something new.
Tags: household exposure, mesothelioma
