Mesothelioma is aт insidious disease that develops as a result of asbestos exposure. This mineral is highly durable to heating that makes it excellent for building materials, piping, insulation, etc. In the past it was in the wide use, and people were exposed to big amount of asbestos fibers for decades. As a result, today millions of people experience this disease.
The statistics shows constantly growing number of mesothelioma cases. While using and mining asbestos was limited more than 40 years ago, its consequences have just come to their peak value.
This fact is explained by the specific nature of asbestos. It can collect in the body for decades before showing the first symptoms of the damage it makes inside. Mesothelioma develops very slowly but after the first signs this type of cancer aggressively grows to highly dangerous stages. This seriously complicates treatment and explains rather low survival rate compared with other types of cancer.
The general statistics shows that about 43 000 patients with mesothelioma diagnosis die every year. The USA, Australia, Japan and countries of Western Europe has the highest number of cases. The rate of overlooked mesothelioma cases is about one to 4-5 recorded.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO) the average survival time after the diagnosis is defined is 9 – 12 months. The survival rate is calculated for the different age of disease. In the USA approximately 40% of mesothelioma patients survive into one year mark. 20% of patients live to two years and around 8% of patients meet the third year.
At the age of less than 50 years about 45% of patients survive after the first year of disease, 25% live to three years and about 13% live for more than 10 years after mesothelioma has been diagnosed. This statistics is shown for male patients. In case of female patients the rates are higher for the first 7 years – after the 1st year more than 70% of female patients survive, 48% live up to 3 years and about 35% live up to 10 years. The survival rates seriously lowers within the age – among male patients above 75 years old 0% live more than 7 years after diagnosed mesothelioma.
There are a few factors that influence on mesothelioma survival rate. The major one is age. The younger patient is, the best prognosis he has. People of age above 75 survive for the first year of disease only in 33% of cases.
The second factor is gender. It is still unknown why, but women have three times better survival rate than men. About 13.5% of female patients with pleural mesothelioma survive after the first 5 years, and only 4.5% of male patients reach this mark.
About 95% of mesothelioma cases are white individuals. The survival rate among black and Hispanic patients is higher starting from 2 years mark of living after the disease diagnosed. About 10% of black and Hispanic patients live for more than 10 years, and only 3% of white patients live to the same time.
The mesothelioma survival rate also influences on the type of disease. Pleural mesothelioma has lower rates compared to peritoneal. About 40% of pleural type patients live to 1 year, compared to 80% of peritoneal type patients.
At the first stage of the disease the survival rate is 21%, 19% rate is for the second stage. The stage III rate is 16%, and stage IV – 12%.
For quite a long time the mesothelioma considered to be incurable disease, and the rate of survivals was close to zero. Today’s medicine gives much more optimistic prognosis, having improved therapy and diagnostics methods. Treatment can significantly improve the quality of living and extend the lifetime for people with mesothelioma.