Signs and Symptoms

These symptoms may be caused by mesothelioma or by other, less serious conditions.

* chest wall pain

* pleural effusion, or fluid surrounding the lung

* shortness of breath

* wheezing, hoarseness, or cough

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* abdominal pain

* ascites, or an abnormal buildup of fluid in the abdomen

* a mass in the abdomen

* problems with bowel function

* weight loss

* blood clots in the veins, which may cause thrombophlebitis

* disseminated intravascular coagulation, a disorder causing severe bleeding in many body organs

* jaundice, or yellowing of the eyes and skin

* low blood sugar level

* pleural effusion

* pulmonary emboli, or blood clots in the arteries of the lungs

* severe ascites

Diagnosis

Diagnosing mesothelioma is often difficult, because the symptoms are similar to those of a number of other conditions. Diagnosis begins with a review of the patient’s medical history. A history of exposure to asbestos may increase clinical suspicion for mesothelioma. A physical examination is performed, followed by chest X-ray and often lung function tests. The X-ray may reveal pleural thickening commonly seen after asbestos exposure and increases suspicion of mesothelioma. A CT (or CAT) scan or an MRI is usually performed. If a large amount of fluid is present, abnormal cells may be detected by cytology if this fluid is aspirated with a syringe. For pleural fluid this is done by a pleural tap or chest drain, in ascites with an paracentesis or ascitic drain and in a pericardial effusion with pericardiocentesis. While absence of malignant cells on cytology does not completely exclude mesothelioma, it makes it much more unlikely, especially if an alternative diagnosis can be made (e.g. tuberculosis, heart failure).

If cytology is positive or a plaque is regarded as suspicious, a biopsy is needed to confirm a diagnosis of mesothelioma. A doctor removes a sample of tissue for examination under a microscope by a pathologist. A biopsy may be done in different ways, depending on where the abnormal area is located. If the cancer is in the chest, the doctor may perform a thoracoscopy. In this procedure, the doctor makes a small cut through the chest wall and puts a thin, lighted tube called a thoracoscope into the chest between two ribs. Thoracoscopy allows the doctor to look inside the chest and obtain tissue samples.

Once the diagnosis is confirmed, the doctor may need to assess the stage to help plan treatment.

Mesothelioma is described as localized if the cancer is found only on the membrane surface where it originated. It is classified as advanced if it has spread beyond the original membrane surface to other parts of the body, such as the lymph nodes, lungs, chest wall, or abdominal organs.

If the cancer is in the abdomen, the doctor may perform a laparoscopy. To obtain tissue for examination, the doctor makes a small opening in the abdomen and inserts a special instrument into the abdominal cavity. If these procedures do not yield enough tissue, more extensive diagnostic surgery may be necessary.

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Tags: mesothelioma

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Tags: mesothelioma

More and more is being learned (or “re-learned”) each day about the mind-body connection. The relatively new field of psychoneuroimmunology is exploding with new discoveries about how thoughts and emotions affect the body’s immune and other systems, to create or reverse dis-ease.

Hypnosis is a very effective mind-body-spirit technique for producing change. In many cases, the most viable option for ridding cancer from the body is surgery; therefore, hypnosis is often used at this juncture.

Whether major or minor, surgery can be frightening. Hypnosis can help address and allay whatever fears a person may have regarding upcoming surgery–whether they be of the surgery itself, the effects on lifestyle afterwards, or even residual fears they may have from previous surgical procedures they or someone they know has had.

One example of this is a friend of mine who was diagnosed with breast cancer. One of her main “hidden” fears we uncovered in our consultation was that she would not survive the surgery. In talking with her further, it was discovered that when she was younger her father had died during the surgery to remove his cancer. She was carrying this fear that the same thing would happen to her. This was addressed in her hypnosis session and she said that afterwards, she was no longer carrying the anxiety that this would be her fate as well.

By using hypnosis techniques and suggestions, you are able to allow your body to relax and allay fears surrounding the surgery, thus helping you to feel calm in the weeks, days, and hours before the surgery. This can not only help you heal faster, it can also make you feel more comfortable and in control of your healing at a time when you can often feel helpless and vulnerable.

Other benefits of utilizing pre-surgical hypnosis can be:

–Need for less anesthesia during surgery (indeed, some surgeries have even been performed with no chemical anesthesia simply by utilizing deep hypnotic techniques to produce a natural anesthesia).

–Reduced pain after surgery, which has the added result of needing less post-operative pain medication.

–Shortened recovery time (by strengthening the immune system and visualizing post-operative healing goals).

–Reduced medical bills (with less anesthesia, pain medication, and time spent in the hospital and/or in rehab, your medical costs will be greatly reduced).

A study conducted by the Department of Psychology at Harvard Medical School, through McLean Hospital in Massachusetts, showed the hypnosis group’s objectively observed wound healing on women undergoing mammaplasty surgery to be significantly greater than the other two groups through 7 postoperative weeks. In addition, at both the 1-week and 7-week post-surgical observation intervals, one-way analyses showed the hypnosis group to be significantly more healed than the usual care controls.

Similar results were found with subjective assessments of postoperative pain, incision healing, and functional recovery. In her book, Prepare for Surgery, Heal Faster, Peggy Huddleston recounts even more impressive results of various studies and non-clinical experiments conducted around the world which showed the positive effects of preparing a patient positively before surgery and using healing visualizations and/or statements before and during surgeries.

Some of my most rewarding sessions have been working with cancer patients to prepare them physically, emotionally, and even spiritually for what lies ahead in their healing and improve their chances of recovery. If you or someone you know is currently dealing with this issue, read some of my cancer clients’ testimonials on my website at hypnocoachlisa.com/Testimonials.html” target=”_blank hypnocoachlisa.com/Testimonials.html and contact me for a free consultation.

Lisa Smith is a Certified Master Hypnotherapist, Wellness Coach, and NeuroLinguistic Programming Practitioner in the Virginia Beach area. She is a sought-after speaker, workshop presenter, and group coaching facilitator for creating health and self-fulfillment.

Her private practice, Life by Design Coaching and Hypnotherapy, offers coaching, hypnosis, NLP, and other options for health and self-improvement. In her 11 years as a hypnotherapist, she has conducted over 8,000 hypnosis sessions with children and adults for weight loss, addictions; stress and anxiety; phobias; childbirth; surgery preparation, cancer, pain management, and other mind-body healing. Sessions can be conducted in person or by phone.

Visit her website at hypnocoachlisa.com hypnocoachlisa.com for contact and other information.

Tags: breast cancer, cancer patient, healing

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Tags: breast cancer, cancer patient, healing

So you’ve finished treatment, your hair is starting to grow back and the fog of chemotherapy is slowly starting to lift - what now? One of the issues all breast cancer survivors must deal with is the long-term side effects that can arise post therapy.

From a physical standpoint, your body has changed. The after effects of surgery can leave you with a stiff shoulder, so exercise is important in terms of regaining a full rage of motion again. You’ll probably have to always take a little extra time with it when stretching in the future. Depending on how many lymph nodes you had removed, you may have to contend with lymphedema. Exercise and eating healthily are probably the best ways to deal with the physical side effects of surgery and radiation. Massage can be a good way to help with some of the scaring that may have occurred, limiting your physical motion.

If you had chemotherapy, you will have to contend with some long-term sided effects. Chemo brain is probably the most annoying of these. This is a decrease in the cognitive brain function, which may or may not improve over time. Another issue is fatigue, which will lessen over time. You may have gained some weight, so, again, exercise and diet changes can help you get back to a more comfortable weight. Bone loss is also an issue, especially when women are thrown into early menopause after chemo (yet another side effect). Taking calcium supplements will help with that. A chemotherapy called Adriamycin can cause damage to the heart.

Body image and intimacy are other issues and usually the hardest to talk about. After having surgery and treatments that are very invasive in addition to the feeling of distrust towards your own body for turning on you, it’s no wonder that it takes a little time for a woman to feel good about sex again after having breast cancer. It’s important to let your partner know how you are feeling if you are having issues of this type so that they don’t take it personally and can give you the space you need to recover. Talking to a professional about any issues you may be having can help immensely during this time.

For younger breast cancer survivors, pregnancy is sometimes an issue if they had not yet had children. Survivors can struggle with the decision to have children after their diagnosis. On one hand, some women feel that they should not bring a child into the world if they are not completely certain they will be around to raise them. On the other hand, some feel that they can at least carry on their family heritage and give the child a few years of love and care in the event that the cancer comes back. Also, chemotherapy can cause you to lose your fertility, so if you think you may want to have children using a donor egg or in vitro fertilization, you will need to consider the risks associated with hormones that will be used to regulate the pregnancy.

Recovering from cancer can take time, but being aware of these potential long-term issues and being proactive with them can help make the recovery easier.

Michael Russell
Your Independent guide to breast-cancer.treatment-and-guides.com/ Breast Cancer

Tags: breast cancer, chemotherapy

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Continued from part 1.

If the effusion is suspicious for some infection or cancer, sample of the fluid may give the clue whether the cause is benign or malignant. However, four out of five tests may miss the cancer. Eventually, the biopsy of the pleura by a needle or by a surgical procedure confirms the diagnosis of the mesothelioma.

For abdominal mesothelioma, an abdominal x-ray checks the fluid in your belly.

Sometime an x-ray may show not only effusions, but also mass, or signs of asbestos accumulation, pleural plaques and calcifications or scarring due to asbestosis and chronic inflammation.

Drain of the fluid is done by needle in the chest or abdominal cavity. The name is thoracocentesis or pleural aspiration from chest, and abdoparacentesis or peritoneal aspiration in tummy.

At modern days the CT (computerized tomography) scan is used more often. CT is a special x-ray machine that shows sliced images of your body. CT scan of chest or abdomen shows the swellings in organs, cavities, and lymph nodes. A contrast dye may help to the scan. CT scans show pleural effusion, pleural thickening, pleural calcification, spreading of tumor into chest wall. However, CT do not really distinguish benign asbestos disease, lung cancer or mesothelioma. Doctors also use CT scans for guiding needle aspiration of suspicious pleural masses.

Thoracoscopy is the procedure when a surgeon makes small cut in your chest wall between two ribs and looks through a thoracoscope (a tool with a video camera). The biopsy (tissue sample) goes to a lab to check for cancer cells.

Bronchoscopy allows doctors to look inside the airways. A thin flexible tube (bronchoscope) helps to get samples of tissue and send them sent to a lab for testing for cancer cells.

Mediastinoscopy checks mediastinum (the area in chest containing heart, great blood vessels, lymph nodes, esophagus, nerves and so on). Mediastinoscopy allows sampling lymph nodes in your body to look for metastases.

Laparoscopy is a surgical procedure when doctors look inside of your belly with a small camera-fitted tube. The surgeons will biopsy suspicious areas. The bioptate (the tissue sample) goes to the laboratory. A pathologist checks it under a microscope. Laparoscopy leaves a small cut on the skin of your belly. Another name of the same procedure is peritoneoscopy. The tool is named peritoneoscope.

Putting a needle into your abdomen and removing the fluid inside is named paracentesis Putting a needle into your chest and draining the fluid is named thoracentesis.

MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) scan gives a sliced picture of the inside of your body. It is better than X-ray or CT scan because there is no radiation of your body. However it requires significant time. Sometimes it takes up to 20 minutes. And some people afraid to stay in the machine for half an hour required for the test. Besides MRI has a limitation. The test requires avoiding metals in your bodies (like metal joints and other metal implants). MRI is not a routine test, so sometime it is not ordered. Magnetic Resonance Imaging is most commonly ordered to determine the extent of tumor to plan the surgery. MRI also easier than CT scans shows enlarged lymph nodes and surface of diaphragm and this is important for surgical planning.

Positron Emission Tomography (PET) came recently for diagnosing different type of cancers and mesothelioma as well. PET uses special radioactive substances that emit positrons. Localized mesothelioma is confined to the pleura. Advanced mesothelioma spreads to the lungs, chest wall, abdomen and lymph nodes.

Pathological examination checks biopsy samples under the microscope It is difficulty to diagnose mesothelioma sometime. The cells of the tumor may be of many different types. These cells may look similar to other cancers. Peritoneal cells may look similar to pleural mesothelioma or other types of lung cancer and even ovarian cancer. Epithelioid type of mesothelioma is more common and considered better for treatment more than aggressive sarcomatous type. Biphasic mesothelioma is the mixture of both.

Doctors and scientists also proposed some immunological makers to find mesothelioma, however majority of the markers are not very specific. Just to mention: Epithelial membrane antigen, CEA (carcinoembryonic antigen √ very unspecific, may happen in many different cancers), Calretinin, Mesothelin, Cytokeratin, osteopontin and some others.

Look also: cis.nci.nih.gov/fact cis.nci.nih.gov/fact, nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/mesothelioma nlm.nih.gov, rdoctor.com rdoctor.com

So, to recap, the tests used by doctors:

*X-rays

*CT scan

*Thoracocentesis

*Paracentesis

*Thoracoscopy

*Bronchoscopy

*MRI scan

*Mediastinoscopy

*Laparoscopy

*All kinds of biopsy

The diagnosis is done after careful evaluation of complaints, physical exam and imaging in addition to the biopsy.

Keywords: Diagnosis, asbestos cancer, malignant pleural mesothelioma, mesothelioma symptoms, peritoneal mesothelioma, lung cancer

Aleksandr Kavokin, MD, PhD. Medical Articles kavokin.com kavokin.com, Free On-line diagnostics at symptomat.com symptomat.com, rdoctor.com rdoctor.com.

Tags: lung cancer, mesothelioma, ovarian cancer, pleural mesothelioma

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Tags: lung cancer, mesothelioma, ovarian cancer, pleural mesothelioma