When you first receive the news, a cancer diagnosis can feel like the worst news possible. However, many people with cancer can undergo treatment that kills the cancer cells, stops the spread to tissue and allows them to go into remission.
Although there is no single cure for cancer, many different kinds of cancers have treatments with high success rates. Different surgeries, chemotherapy, radiation treatment and even immunotherapies can improve someone’s chances of overcoming cancer.
When treatment stops the spread of cancer or reduces its symptoms, the patient goes into remission. When complete remission lasts for five years, doctors will then declare you cancer-free, which is the oncology equivalent of being cured. Is there currently a treatment that doctors acknowledge as helping those with mesothelioma achieve remission?
Mesothelioma remains a difficult cancer to treat
Although researchers have made massive strides toward better treatment options for those with cancer, mesothelioma remains difficult to treat. Doctors often focus on slowing the spread of the cancer and treating the various symptoms that it produces rather than trying to cure the underlying cancer.
Patients with mesothelioma are unlikely to go in remission through treatments but can improve both how long they survive with mesothelioma and their quality of life.
How can you evaluate the severity of your mesothelioma?
If not discussed in terms of a cure, how do you classify the cancer you have? Doctors discuss the seriousness of different forms of cancer based on their survival rates for patients. By tracking how many people survive for how long after a diagnosis, doctors can more accurately express the likely effect of a specific form of cancer on a patient and their family.
Mesothelioma is a particularly aggressive form of cancer. Although it initially attacks the organ linings, it will eventually spread to other tissue as well.
What is the 5-year survival rate for mesothelioma?
The survival rate for mesothelioma correlates strongly to how far the cancer has spread at the time of diagnosis. Overall, patients have a 10% five-year survival rate. Those with localizaed cancer have the highest rate of survival, at 18%. Regional spread of mesothelioma lowers that to 12%, and those with the cancer spreading to distant parts of the body have a 7% five-year survival rate.
Both the treatment someone requires when they have mesothelioma and their unfortunate early death will have financial implications for them and their family. Seeking compensation after a mesothelioma diagnosis can make it easier to get treatment and also help someone provide for their family in the future.