Mesothelioma facts
Mesothelioma affects one person in about a million typically, and is a type of cancer which is not common. It is usually caused by asbestos exposure.
Smoking is not known as a cause of mesothelioma itself, but it can increase the risk of the disease alongside asbestos exposure. The usual cause of the disease is breathing in the dust of asbestos. This can happen while working or indirectly such as while doing the laundry of a person who works with the chemical.
The symptoms of this cancer sometimes include difficulty in breathing due to liquid which builds up in the lungs, pain in the chest as well as less specific symptoms including loss of weight, high temperature and pains in the abdomen, head and neck. The symptoms might not be present at all until up to 50 years after the asbestos exposure. Diagnosis of the disease can be helped by a CT scan or chest X-ray, and could be verified by a biopsy (tissue sample).
Most people don’t recover when they know they have the disease. The median survival time is about nine months, with a 5-year survival rate at only about ten percent. A few patients sometimes live for more than twenty years with the disease. While radiation treatment alone is not very effective, in combination with radical surgery and chemo-therapy, some patients can live more than five years.
Most patients die within 18 months of knowing they have this disease not because the disease is rapidly progressing, but because diagnosis is often only clear at a late stage of the disease. Treatment can be expensive, sometimes totaling up to 800,000 US dollars.
Mesothelioma litigation began in 1929. Over half a million asbestos claims have been filed. Workers in the ship building and repairing industries have the highest mortality rate from Mesothelioma, and as such are the most likely to seek an asbestos settlement. The amounts received from mesothelioma claims can be considerable so there are specialist asbestos lawyers and asbestos attorneys.
The prognosis for the disease is typically not good, even given the currently available treatments.
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