How is the Prognosis of Mesothelioma?

In the United States more than 2,000 new cases of mesothelioma are diagnosed every year and most of the cases are due to exposure to asbestos due to presence of asbestos in the work place of some indirect exposure to asbestos. It is only natural for the patient to know about the possible prognosis of the disease he/she has developed. The disease may be mild simple viral fever or a cancer like mesothelioma. Even it becomes a duty of the doctor diagnosing the mesothelioma or treating the disease to discuss the possibleprognosis of mesothelioma or any other disease and also the probable influence mesothelioma will have on the normal functioning of the patient of mesothelioma.

The factors which may influence the prognosis of mesothelioma are many. The most important factor that influence the prognosis of mesothelioma is detection time, the earlier it is diagnosed the better is the prognosis; unfortunately most of the mesotheliomas are diagnosed when they are in late stage. The time taken by the mesothelioma cancer to become symptomatic is generally long, which is the reason of late stage diagnosis. Another reason for late diagnosis is the less serious symptoms mesothelioma produce and due to the less serious symptoms they may be taken as less serious problem. Due to the diagnosis of mesothelioma in the late stage of disease theprognosis of the disease is generally poor.

Another factor that has influence on the prognosis of mesothelioma is the type of mesothelioma. Generally mesotheliomas are pleural mesothelioma, pericardial mesothelioma, peritoneal mesothelioma and testicular mesothelioma. Different type of mesothelioma have differentprognosis, although in general they don’t differ much.

Other factors that may influence the prognosis of mesothelioma are smoking (if the mesothelioma patient is a smoker he/she will succumb to the disease earlier than a non smoker), size of the mesothelioma tumor (the bigger the tumor size the worst is the prognosis), the severity of the associated symptoms (like presence of fluid in lungs as in pleural mesothelioma or abdomen as in peritoneal mesothelioma), and the location of tumor (which can determine if the tumor can be removed surgically, which if possible can give much better prognosis that tumor that can not be removed surgically).