Peritoneal mesothelioma is a rare form of a rare type of cancer. Mesothelioma is a cancer that’s caused from exposure to asbestos. Less than three thousand people are diagnosed with this type of cancer in the US each year. Of those, between ten and twenty percent have peritoneal mesothelioma.
Peritoneal mesothelioma is an aggressive cancer that grows in the peritoneum, which is a layer of tissue that essentially covers the abdominal area. Other types of mesothelioma form in the tissue that surrounds the organs like the heart and lungs.
This cancer is caused by inhaling asbestos. The fibers don’t break down in the body like many other ingest or inhaled substances. They never leave once inhaled, and lodge between mesothelial cells, which gives this type of cancer its name.
Because today we know that asbestos is dangerous and deadly, it has to be removed from public buildings and we’re warned about having it removed from our homes. Special hazardous materials handlers, known as hazmat workers, have to remove asbestos while wearing protective suits and using special equipment to keep it from getting on their skin or into the air.
Peritoneal mesothelioma, like other forms of asbestos-caused cancer, will often not show up for several years after the initial asbestos exposure. It can even take 2 to 5 decades before symptoms appear. But once the exposure happens, and the asbestos fibers lodge between the cells, they cause irritation and inflammation. This causes the cells to grow abnormally and they become cancerous. As the cells continue to grow and divide in this warped way, the peritoneum thickens, and the cells eventually form a tumor or often several tumors.
Symptoms can include things like fever, sweating at night, diarrhea, constipation, stomach pain, stomach swelling, weight loss, nausea, vomiting, anemia, constant fatigue, and in many cases the lumps growing on the abdominal wall can be felt beneath the skin. Since most of the symptoms are symptoms of a variety of ailments, having them does not mean you have peritoneal mesothelioma. X-rays can confirm or help rule out the disease, as can other testing like tissue or fluid biopsies.
This type of cancer has often been present in the body so long before it’s discovered, that it’s typically very hard to treat. By the time it’s discovered, it’s almost always last stage cancer, which means it has spread over the affected area and often beyond it. Surgery can be performed to remove the obvious cancer, and then chemotherapy and radiation are used to kill any remaining cancer cells or at least slow its growth. There is no cure, but these measures can bring temporary relief from the pain of the cancer and prolong the patient’s life.
A chemotherapy treatment known as intraperitoneal chemotherapy can sometimes be used to help fight the cancer. In this treatment, the medicine is injected into the peritoneum instead of the bloodstream, to fight the cancer at its source. This treatment and clinical trials of new treatments often give peritoneal mesothelioma patients the best chance at longer more comfortable lives than standard treatments alone.
Joe Gardner has years of experience working in health care and extensive research of mesothelioma.
