Friday, October 26, 2012

From U Pennsylvania: Photodynamic therapy for malignant pleural mesothelioma

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23055222


 2012 Oct 1;10 Suppl 2:S75-9.

Photodynamic therapy for malignant pleural mesothelioma.

Source

Presented by Joseph S. Friedberg, MD, Chief, Thoracic Surgery, University of Pennsylvania Health System, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Abstract

Surgery is the treatment option most likely to be associated with prolonged remission in patients with malignant pleural mesothelioma. However, it remains investigational and must always be combined with other modalities to treat the microscopic disease that remains after the most aggressive operations. Improvements in quality of life for appropriate patients with this rare yet incurable cancer may be obtained with less drastic lung-sparing surgical procedures along with intraoperative use of photodynamic therapy (PDT). Very encouraging survival results have been obtained with the combination of surgery and PDT, which requires the well-orchestrated collaborative effort of an extensive team of professionals, from thoracic surgeons and radiation oncologists to basic science researchers. Multi-institutional trials are necessary to duplicate these early findings and shed more light on the tumor-directed immune response of this surgically based multimodal treatment.

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