[Pleural mesothelioma: where are we with radical surgery and multimodal treatment?]

Multimodal treatment of pleural mesothelioma, which is reserved for specialised centres for epithelial forms without node involvement, must include preliminary laparoscopy, thoracoscopy and mediastinoscopy. Following chemotherapy, in our opinion surgical removal via pleuropneumonectomy should be performed without resection of the diaphragm and the pericardium, because of the risks of seeding and postoperative complications. Our limited experience with 15 patients has confirmed the feasibility of this with no deaths. High-dose radiotherapy of the whole pneumonectomy cavity appears essential, but the optimal technique is debatable. Only five homogeneous series of more than 40 patients incorporating hemithoracic radiotherapy have been published.