Sunday, January 17, 2010

Timely Diagnosis Of Mesothelioma Is Very Essential For Effective Treatment

By Heidi Wingrain

Many factors are there which can hamper exact and speedy diagnosis mesothelioma. There is the possibility of making errors regarding the disease if the doctor is not an experienced person with the required expertise. Mesothlioma, being a rare form of cancer, the number of skillful doctors and cancer centers are comparatively less. The second difficulty is that the symptoms of the cancer like shortness of breath, continuous cough etc are symptomatic of lesser diseases like pneumonia, influenza etc also. Thirdly, all the three types of mesothelioma have more or less similar symptoms making it extremely difficult for the doctors to diagnose it accurately. The fatal nature of the disease can be realized only when we come to know that its symptoms appear only at the advanced stages.

In most cases, doctors detect the existence of the cancer only when a patient visits him with complaints like breathing problems, fever, etc. If in doubt, physicians may start diagnosis mesothelioma with a thorough examination of the patient's work and health history. In many cases, the work history itself testifies the cancer and a thorough diagnosis confirms the doubt.

Many imaging tests are used as a first step in mesothelioma detection. They include MRI, CT Scan, X-ray of the chest and abdomen etc. But these tests cannot confirm cancerous growths. Apart from this additional lung tests are conducted in many cases.

Doctors employ a typical test called thoracoscopy using an instrument called the thoracoscope to look into the chest cavity through a cut made between two ribs. For this, a local anesthetic is used. The same way, doctors apply another test named petoneoscopy with a peculiar tool named peritoneoscope to check the abdomen for any unusual growth. Biopsy, which the most modern confirmative tests of cancer, confirms the worst fears. A small piece of the suspicious tissue is removed and checked under the microscope to analyze whether any cancer cells exist.

Unfortunately, the existence of the cancer is detected very late and by then, the chances of successful cure may be totally gone. Therefore, it is very essential on the part of every person who had been under asbestos exposure at some point of time to visit a mesothelioma doctor periodically and get checked. If a doubt comes up, doctors need to conduct immediate diagnosis mesothelioma so that the life of the patient is prolonged satisfactorily.

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