February 16, 2022 Early diagnosis is essential for a positive outcome with any disease. As we learn more about mesothelioma, survival rates improve. For aggressive cancer like mesothelioma, the prognosis is closely monitored. Simply put, mesothelioma’s survival rate is defined as the percentage of patients who live for a given time period following a diagnosis. One of the challenging aspects of mesothelioma is how little time patients tend to have due to the late stage of disease once it is discovered. Late-stage diagnosis results from the symptoms taking decades to manifest before the victim realizes they even need help. At which point, the disease has already progressed.
Additionally, early symptoms overlap with other conditions like pneumonia, which can lead to misdiagnosis. This delay in symptoms and diagnosis makes for a grim prognosis. Still, the stage of mesothelioma at the time of diagnosis can impact those survival rates.
How is the Survival Rate for Mesothelioma Measured?
In general, mesothelioma is measured in one-year and five-year survival rates. Specifically, there are three main types of mesothelioma, each with its own degree of survivability: peritoneal, pleural, and pericardial. A 2015 study published in Translational Oncology with data collected from 1992 to 2012 shows that the five-year survival rate for peritoneal mesothelioma patients is five times higher than pleural patients. The one-year survival rate for pleural mesothelioma is 73%, which reduces to 4.7% at the five-year marker. While peritoneal mesothelioma similarly drops off at five years, it starts higher with a 92% survival rate at the one-year point, and the five-year mark reflects that with a 39% survival rate. Pericardial and testicular mesothelioma are far rarer and only account for 2% of cases. Median survival for testicular mesothelioma comes to 24 months, with pericardial patients’ survival ranging from six weeks to 15 months.
Is Survival Rate Different from Life Expectancy?
Survival rates are different from life expectancy, which measures the average time a person can expect to live based on their age, gender, and other factors. Survival rates may also be affected by factors like tumor location, the disease stage at the time of diagnosis, mesothelioma cell type (there are three types), genetics, blood counts, age, and other lifestyle factors like smoking.
The three mesothelioma cell types are epithelioid, sarcomatoid, and biphasic. Epithelioid is the most common and least aggressive type of cell. The most aggressive is sarcomatoid mesothelioma. It has a median survival of six to eight months. Biphasic tumors are a mix of the other two types of cells with better outcomes when the tumor is mostly epithelial cells.
Younger Patients Have the Best Mesothelioma Survival Rates
Younger patients are eligible for more aggressive therapies that are more effective. They also have fewer comorbidities such as pulmonary disease, diabetes, or history of prior cancer. With aggressive treatments when the disease is caught in stage 1 or 2, some studies show that about half will see a life expectancy of two years. One-fifth will have a life expectancy of five years.
Women are more often diagnosed with the less aggressive form of peritoneal mesothelioma, which is one reason why researchers cite that women fare better than their male counterparts. Hormonal differences may also affect outcomes. Half of peritoneal patients who undergo HIPEC (hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy) live longer than five years. The median survival is less than twelve months for patients with pleural tumors.
The factors associated with better survival are:
- peritoneal mesothelioma
- people under age 45 years old
- female patients
- epithelioid cell type in stage 1 of the disease
- surgery and chemotherapy treatment combination
Ultimately, the sooner the diagnosis, the better. The good news is that survival rates continue improving for mesothelioma as researchers deepen their understanding of the factors that increase positive treatment outcomes.
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