The pathway to a successful diagnosis and treatment can be long and difficult. It will most likely involve visiting various doctors and/or specialists.
Your family physician, with the help of standard image scanning tests, should be able to diagnosis the presence of mesothelioma.
If cancer cells are present and the cancer is caught relatively early then…
An oncologist, a cancer specialist, will go further and may suggest an MRI, CAT scans or a biopsy.
A pathologist will examine the blood tests, looking for the presence of cancerous cells.
If surgery is an option then…
A surgeon will open up the chest and/or abdominal cavity to remove the tumors that have been found.
If surgery is not an option then…
A radiologist trained in these procedures, will do the radiation and chemotherapy treatments.
If the mass of cancer cells is too large for surgery or in an inoperable area, then procedures start to make the patient as comfortable as possible. Surgeons may be able to remove fluid build-up, or some tumors to slow the cancer’s growth and to make the patient more comfortable.
Sometimes cancer specialists are seen but as mesothelioma is a very aggressive cancer, the patients don’t have much longer to live. This means that the family physicians, surgeons, radiologists and pathologists are the doctors normally seen.