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Prepared by Dr Simon Taggart, February 2006

The disease usually presents as a combination of chest wall pain and breathlessness. More advanced cases often describe significant recent weight loss and poor appetite. Most cases are also accompanied by the presence of some pleural fluid (effusion).

Mesothelioma can be seen on a standard chest X-ray although it is not easy to distinguish this from benign pleural thickening without the use of CT Scanning and open biopsy. Mesothelioma causes intense thickening of the pleura, which prevents the lungs from expanding during inhalation. Mesothelioma may also grow into adjacent structures e.g. diaphragms, mediastinum, chest wall and abdominal cavity. Mesothelioma may also originate in the abdomen (peritoneal mesothelioma) where it causes excess fluid to accumulate (ascites).

Mesothelioma is a very serious condition as the average survival from diagnosis is only a year or so. Treatments are more often than not palliative in nature and designed to alleviate distressing symptoms of breathlessness and pain. A few cases may be suitable for surgical resection and chemotherapy and or radiotherapy have been shown to increase survival on average by only a few months.

Dr Taggart is a Consultant Physician in Chest & General Medicine at Trafford General & Salford Royal Hospitals NHS Trust. He is the Lead Lung Cancer Clinician at the two Trusts and has considerable experience in the field of chest medicine in particular industrial lung disease.