New Keywords in the Treatment of Malignant Pleural Mesothelioma

Our plain-English summary of New Keywords in the Treatment of Malignant Pleural Mesothelioma, by P. Bertoglio, M. Lucchi, A. Mussi (The Annals of Thoracic Surgery, 2017).

The study

• Authors: P. Bertoglio, M. Lucchi, A. Mussi
• Journal: The Annals of Thoracic Surgery
• Published: 2017;104(4):1434
• Type of article: Letter, Comment
• Cited by: 2 articles, as counted by NIH iCite
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher

In plain English

This is a letter to the editor, not a research study. Three doctors from the Division of Thoracic Surgery at the University Hospital of Pisa, Italy, wrote in response to an article by Friedberg and colleagues on lung-sparing surgery for malignant pleural mesothelioma. The authors said their own approach was similar. They also performed lung-sparing surgery, but combined it with hyperthermic intrathoracic chemotherapy (heated chemotherapy given inside the chest) instead of photodynamic therapy. They reported that in their experience they had seen good long-term outcomes, a low rate of high-grade complications and no deaths within 90 days. The letter does not say how many patients were treated and gives no detailed outcome statistics. That work had been presented at a congress and was under review for publication. The authors acknowledged that the real effect of these added therapies inside the chest was still unknown and that results of ongoing trials were awaited. They concluded that multimodality treatment, quality of life and standardization were the key words for the future of mesothelioma treatment. The letter does not discuss asbestos exposure.

We wrote this plain-English summary from the full article with the help of AI, and a second AI model checked each sentence against the article. It is not the authors' wording; the abstract and the article are their own account.

What the study did and found

• Design: letter to the editor (correspondence) commenting on another article; not an original study
• Who was studied: No study population is described. The authors refer, without numbers, to their own experience treating mesothelioma patients at the University Hospital of Pisa. That experience was presented at the IMIG congress in Birmingham, UK, and was under review for publication.
• Exposure: No asbestos exposure is discussed. The letter concerns treatment: lung-sparing surgery combined with hyperthermic intrathoracic chemotherapy, compared with the photodynamic therapy used by Friedberg and colleagues.
• Main results:
  • In the authors' own (unpublished) experience with lung-sparing surgery plus hyperthermic intrathoracic chemotherapy, they reported good long-term outcomes, a low rate of high-grade complications, and no 90-day mortality. The letter does not give the number of patients or detailed outcome statistics.
• The authors' conclusion: The authors concluded that multimodality, quality of life, and standardization are the fundamental key words for the future of mesothelioma treatment.
• Limitations the authors state:
  • The authors stated that the real effect of additional intrapleural therapies is still unknown and that results of ongoing trials are awaited.

Topics

The National Library of Medicine indexes this study under subjects our site covers: Lung cancer, Mesothelioma.

Medical terms in this study, explained in our Lexicon: Pleural Mesothelioma.

Related studies

• Is less also better? A single-institution experience on treatment of early stage Malignant Pleural Mesothelioma — P. Bertoglio, M.C. Ambrogi, et al. (2017)
• Multimodality treatment of malignant pleural mesothelioma with or without immunotherapy: does it change anything? — M. Lucchi, A. Picchi, et al. (2010)
• Diaphragm and lung-preserving surgery with hyperthermic chemotherapy for malignant pleural mesothelioma: A 10-year experience — M.C. Ambrogi, P. Bertoglio, et al. (2018)
• Chest wall resection for mesothelioma recurrence after surgery — P. Bertoglio, O. Fanucchi, et al. (2016)
• Lung cancer: Biology and treatment options — H. Lemjabbar-Alaoui, O.U. Hassan, et al. (2015)
• Tremelimumab as second-line or third-line treatment in relapsed malignant mesothelioma (DETERMINE): a multicentre, international, randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled phase 2b trial — M. Maio, A. Scherpereel, et al. (2017)

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