If you’ve been diagnosed with mesothelioma, the first thing you should know is that every case is different. There are many factors in play here, such as what type of treatment you use and how far along the disease has progressed by the time it is caught.
That being said, the median length of survival for those who are diagnosed is just 12 months. This is a very aggressive type of cancer, which is what makes it so dangerous.
Mesothelioma takes about 2,500 lives every year, though that has been increasing slightly over the years as the population of the United States also increases. For instance, it led to 2,479 deaths back in 1999, and then a study found that it led to 2,597 deaths in 2015. Over the entire course of the study, from 1999 to 2015, there were 45,221 total fatalities reported.
Part of this is just due, as noted, to population changes. The study pinned the overall death rate at 10.93 deaths per one million people in 2015, but it was actually higher in 1999, sitting at 13.96 deaths for every one million people.
One issue that makes this disease so dangerous and often confusing is that latency periods can be incredibly long. For instance, those who are exposed to dangerous materials like asbestos often do not develop mesothelioma for 20 to 40 years. In some cases, people have not developed it for a stunning 71 years.
If you have mesothelioma, knowing the severity of the disease is important for you to understand all of your legal rights to compensation as you seek out high-end medical care.
Source: CDC, “Malignant Mesothelioma Mortality — United States, 1999-2015,” Jacek M. Mazurek, accessed March 29, 2018