Asbestos exposure is widely known can cause severe disease. The disease is called mesothelioma. Someone can be exposed to asbestos because he or she works with asbestos and eats food or drinks water contaminated with asbestos. Mesothelioma can attack the lung tissue when the airborne asbestos dust is inhaled by someone. But when that harmful dust is swallowed, it can cause mesothelioma at the abdomen cavity.
Wherever the asbestos dust is embedded, it is really dangerous for human body. It can be really deathly. But it is also possible that the tumor caused by this disease is not cancerous. It is called the benign mesothelioma. It is also known as multicystic or fibrous mesothelioma. Both malignant and the benign mesothelioma are more often found in men than in women. The benign mesothelioma is also more common to develop in lungs than in stomach. One thing that makes benign mesothelioma is not deathly is that it doesn’t spread to other body’s tissue. It makes benign mesothelioma is able to be cured.
Benign Mesothelioma
Surgery is the common treatment for benign mesothelioma. It is relatively easy to treat. That is why the prognosis for benign mesothelioma is usually excellent. Surgery is meant to remove the tumors in order to eliminate the cause of the pain. The benign mesothelioma is usually able to be removed in a single operation under normal condition.
But, benign mesothelioma can also be the forerunner of the more serious malignant form of mesothelioma. Hence, the patients are still strongly recommended to have regular check-ups and chest X-ray after the tumors have been removed. Although the surgery succeeds in most cases, there are sometimes complications and serious health risk occurs. It happens when there’s fluid escapes into the lungs’ tissue.
The benign mesothelioma happens in less then 10% of all mesothelioma cases. But it is almost impossible to differentiate both of them because benign mesothelioma has the similar symptoms with the malignant mesothelioma. To distinguish between benign mesothelioma and the malignant one, it needs follow-on diagnostic techniques after the chest X-ray. Those techniques can be MRIs, CT Scans, and open lung biopsies.
The symptoms of benign mesothelioma are usually unrevealed. It makes those patients unaware with this disease. They only realize the fact that they suffer mesothelioma when the chest x-ray shows there’s a tumor in their body. The most common symptoms such as the difficulties in breathing, chest pain, fever, and chronic cough are sometimes not enough to lead to the mesothelioma diagnosis.
