[Experience in treating patients with malignant pleural mesothelioma]

The objective of this study was to analyze the outcome of patients with malignant pleural mesothelioma who were treated from 1993 to 2009. We analyzed a total of 28 patients with malignant pleural mesothelioma. All the patients were males, except for two females and the mean age was 64.5 years old. Twelve and 16 of the patients underwent an extrapleural pneumonectomy and a pleural biopsy, respectively. The histological types included 14 epithelial type, 8 biphasic type, and 6 sarcomatoid type. Three patients were classified as stage I, 8 as stage II, 9 as stage III, and 8 as stage IV. Fourteen and eight of the patients underwent systemic chemotherapy and radiotherapy, respectively. The 2-year survival rate of all the patients was 25.7%, and the 2-year survival of the patients with at least one more modalities of the treatments with chemotherapy, radiotherapy and extrapleural pneumonectomy were much higher than those without. We should therefore consider selecting a multimodality treatment for such patients because the administration of either systemic chemotherapy or radiotherapy was found to be associated with a favorable prognosis.