An Update on Medicines, Therapies and Surgery Options for Mesothelioma from the 12th World Conference on Lung Cancer.

An article in the March 25, 2008 issue of Daily Cancer News highlighted a summary on mesothelioma treatment options and medicines from the World Conference on Lung Cancer.

The report points out that the management of malignant pleural mesothelioma continues to present complex challenges for patients and their physicians.

It is difficult, the article points out, to assess whether mesothelioma medicines such as chemotherapy are better on their own in increasing survival rates in patients versus a combination of chemotherapy and surgery.

This is because there have not yet been any randomized trials comparing surgery/multimodality therapy to chemotherapy alone.

Until that information is available, say lung specialists, physicians need to proceed cautiously when making recommendations for treatment.

Specialists also give the following assessment:

The combination of cisplatin and pemetrexed continues to be the treatment of choice for previously untreated patients with mesothelioma.

For those patients who cannot receive cisplatin, the substitution of carboplatin is recommended.

For those patients who are not candidates for a combination regimen, pemetrexed alone is a "reasonable" option.

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