Predicting survival in mesothelioma

Our plain-English summary of Predicting survival in mesothelioma, by A.W. Musk (The European Respiratory Journal, 2012).

The study

• Author: A.W. Musk
• Journal: The European Respiratory Journal
• Published: 2012;40(6):1582
• Type of article: Letter, Comment
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher

In plain English

This is a short reply letter, not a new study. The author answered a letter by J.G. Smith about an earlier paper by the author and colleagues on survival in malignant mesothelioma in Western Australia. The author explained that the earlier paper aimed to describe the disease's epidemiology there and to show how little survival had improved over 30 years despite large changes in treatment. It was not meant to predict survival in individual or legal cases. The author reported that further analyses traced a u-shaped pattern of survival with age to comparatively poor survival in patients diagnosed under age 40. With those patients excluded, a straight-line decline with age fitted best. Including patients whose site of mesothelioma was unknown produced an apparently anomalous better survival in that group. The author suggested that a model for individual prediction would need to exclude patients diagnosed at death and those with unspecified site of disease. It might also need to exclude those with unrecorded histology, or those diagnosed before 1980 (or maybe 1990 or later). The author proposed working with J.G. Smith on a revised model.

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: Correspondence: the author's reply to a letter commenting on an earlier paper (Musk et al., Eur Respir J 2011). It reports no new study methods or data beyond brief mention of further analyses.
• Who was studied: This letter studied no population of its own. It refers to the earlier paper's data on patients with malignant mesothelioma in Western Australia.
• Main results:
  • Further analyses showed that the u-shaped pattern of survival with age in the earlier model was caused by comparatively poor survival in patients diagnosed under the age of 40 years.
  • When patients diagnosed under 40 years were excluded, a linear decline with age was the best fit.
  • Including all patients with an unknown site of mesothelioma led to an apparently anomalous better survival in that group.
  • The complicated age terms in the earlier model were the best-fitting fractional polynomial fit to the data.
• The authors' conclusion: The author suggested that a survival model for individual prediction (possibly in legal cases) would need to exclude several groups: patients diagnosed at death and those with unspecified site of disease, and possibly those with unrecorded histology and those diagnosed before 1980 (or maybe 1990 or later). The author proposed working with J.G. Smith on a revised model.
• Limitations the authors state:
  • The author stated that the original paper was not designed for predicting survival in current individual or legal cases.
  • The original analysis fitted survival models to all available data, including patients with an unknown site of mesothelioma.

Topics

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

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

Related studies

• Predicting survival in malignant mesothelioma — A.W. Musk, N. Olsen, et al. (2011)
• A Novel Tool for Predicting Major Complications After Cytoreductive Surgery with Hyperthermic Intraperitoneal Chemotherapy — J.M. Baumgartner, T.G. Kwong, et al. (2016)
• Preoperative Risk Score for Predicting Incomplete Cytoreduction: A 12-Institution Study from the US HIPEC Collaborative — M.Y. Zaidi, R.M. Lee, et al. (2020)
• Factors predicting poor survival after lung-sparing radical pleurectomy of IMIG stage III malignant pleural mesothelioma — S. Bölükbas, M. Eberlein, et al. (2013)
• Identification of a Five-Gene Signature for Predicting Survival in Malignant Pleural Mesothelioma Patients — Y. Bai, X. Wang, et al. (2020)
• Predicting survival in malignant pleural mesothelioma using routine clinical and laboratory characteristics — S. Gunatilake, D. Lodge, et al. (2021)

Browse more research in The European Respiratory Journal, or return to medical research.