Malignant Pleural Mesothelioma After Household Exposure to Asbestos.

A 70-year-old female with hypertension, diabetes, and a twenty year long smoking history presented with new onset cough. She had pleuritic chest pain with dyspnea on exertion, without any hemoptysis or fever. She was reported a 10-pound weight loss over two months with occasional night sweats. She has quit smoking twenty five years before diagnosis and denied any occupational exposure to asbestos. Patient's husband of 35 years had died of mesothelioma cancer twelve years earlier. Her second-hand exposure was...Malignant Pleural Mesothelioma After Household Exposure to Asbestos.

Detection of integrin-linked kinase in the serum of patients with malignant pleural mesothelioma.

Integrin-linked kinase, which is relevant to neoplastic transformation, is highly expressed in pleural mesothelioma cancer. Recently...Detection of integrin-linked kinase in the serum of patients with malignant pleural mesothelioma.

Mesothelioma Medical Journal Articles

Mesothelioma Medical Journal Articles

Occupational exposure to asbestos and mortality among asbestos removal workers

Occupational exposure to asbestos and mortality among asbestos removal workers: a Poisson regression analysis

by G Frost, A-H Harding, A Darnton, D McElvenny, and D Morgan

Abstract

The asbestos industry has shifted from manufacture to stripping/removal work. The aim of this study was to investigate early indications of mortality among removal workers. The study population consisted of 31302 stripping/removal workers in the Great Britain Asbestos Survey, followed up to December 2005. Relative risks (RR) for causes of death with elevated standardised mortality ratios (SMR) and sufficient deaths were obtained from...more>>

Materials and methods

The Great Britain Asbestos Survey was established in 1971 to monitor mortality among workers in the asbestos manufacturing industry. Workers were initially invited to participate in the survey with voluntary medical examinations at 2 yearly intervals. Under the Asbestos Licensing Regulations (ALR) 1983 all individuals working with certain kinds of asbestos were required to undergo statutory examinations including pre-employment examinations. At this time substantial numbers of asbestos strippers were recruite...more>>

Statistical analysis
Standardised mortality ratios (SMR) were calculated for all workers in the survey only ever employed in asbestos removal work (n=52387). The expected number of deaths was calculated using the 5-year age-, period- and sex-specific mortality rates for England and Wales, and for Scotland. Person-years at risk were calculated from the date of ...more>>

Results

In total, 52387 asbestos removal workers took part in the survey between 1971 and 2005. Ninety-eight percent of workers were traced for follow-up with the NHSCR. Altogether 31302 asbestos removal workers, who attended between one and 19 examinations during the study period, were included in the analysis (Table 1). Among the removal workers there were 985 deaths including 384 cancers, 115 lung cancers, and 23 mesotheliomas...more>>

Discussion

The main strength of the study is that it captured the vast majority of asbestos removal workers covered by the regulations in Great Britain (GB), together with such confounders as smoking status and on the working practices of the participant specific to the asbestos removal industry.

The majority of removal workers included in the analysis...more>>


Source: National Center for Biotechnology Information

Multidisciplinary treatment of pleural mesothelioma

Multidisciplinary treatment of malignant pleural mesothelioma

  by Giovanni Luca Ceresoli, Cesare Gridelli and Armando Santoro

Abstract

The incidence of malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM) is increasing worldwide, and is predicted to peak in the next 10–20 years. Difficulties in MPM diagnosis and staging, especially of early disease, have thwarted the development of a universally accepted therapeutic approach. Single modality therapies (surgery, radiotherapy, chemotherapy) have generally failed to.......more on The Oncologist>>

Introduction

Malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM) is an aggressive tumor, usually associated with a poor prognosis. The incidence of MPM is increasing throughout most of the world, and it is expected to rise in the next 10–20 years as a result of widespread exposure to asbestos in the past decades. The management of patients with MPM is controversial. Difficulties in diagnosing and staging, especially in early disease, have thwarted the development of a generally accepted stage-related approach. MPM is a heterogeneous disease often associated with different clinical courses; a number of prognostic factors have been described, and two major prognostic scoring systems have been.....more on The Oncologist>>

Staging

Correct clinical staging is mandatory in the approach to treat MPM. Early staging systems have reflected mainly the experiences of individual institutions on their respective patient populations; considerable discrepancies among the various systems have resulted in nonuniformity of reporting. At present, the recommended classification for clinical use is the International Mesothelioma Interest Group (IMIG) staging system, which is based mainly on surgical and pathological variables, and may not be completely applicable to cross-sectional imaging; moreover, the lymphatic drainage of the pleura is quite complex and is not fully reflected in the IMIG system, in which....more on The Oncologist>>

Chemotherapy

Most patients with MPM are potential candidates for chemotherapy at some point in their treatment. For many years a nihilistic attitude has existed about medical treatment of MPM. Most chemotherapy studies have used either single agents or combination regimens in the setting of small phase II trials; the rates of objective tumor regression have been generally <20%, with no significant impact on median survival. In a meta-analysis of early trials published between 1965 and 2001, cisplatin was found to be the most active single drug. Combination chemotherapy has been associated with higher response rates, but not with....more on The Oncologist>>

Source: The Oncologist - the official journal of the Society for Translational Oncology