Types of - Mesothelioma Types

The most common type of mesothelioma is the pleural mesothelioma. The pleura are thin membranes found between the lungs and the chest cavity. They provide a lubricated surface so that the lungs do not chafe against the chest walls. Thus, a pleural mesothelioma is often referred to as a "lung" cancer.

Another form of mesothelioma is the peritoneal mesothelioma. The peritoneum is the membrane that encloses the organs of the abdomen. While peritoneal mesotheliomas are less common than pleural mesotheliomas, they tend to be more invasive, and thus result in a shorter life expectancy for the patient. Mesotheliomas have also been found in the stomach, heart (pericardial mesothelioma), and other abdominal organs.

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What is Pleural Mesothelioma?

Pleural mesothelioma, pleura mesothelioma, or malignant pleural mesothelioma is mesothelioma cancer in the lining of the lungs. This is different from lung cancer, which refers to any type of malignant tumor that originates in the lungs.

The pleura, is the tissue lining or covering that surrounds the lungs. There are two pleura. These can be called pleural membranes. The gap between them is called the pleural space. The pleura are fibrous sheets. They help to protect the lungs. They produce a lubricating fluid that fills the gap between the two pleura. This helps the lungs to move smoothly in the chest when they are inflating and deflating as we breathe.

The first step in detecting pleural mesothelioma is, typically, a chest x-ray or CT scan. This is often followed by a bronchoscopy, using a viewing.

Sope to look inside the lungs. 

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The four Bertrand brothers were a tightly knit bunch, following their father into the insulation trade in the 1950s. They kicked up dust all day as they labored to wrap huge boilers and miles of pipelines with blocks of asbestos and a mudlike asbestos finishing coat.

Sawing and mixing left their faces and hands coated with white film. Like thousands of insulators across the country, the Bertrands didn't know that the white dust could kill.

Bob Bertrand, 64, a St. Paul father of four, is the only surviving brother of a family ravaged by asbestos. And he is fighting for his life against mesothelioma, a rare cancer of the lining of the lungs almost always caused by exposure to asbestos fibers.

He said asbestos contributed to the deaths of two of his brothers, and he and his family suspect it was a factor in the death of his father and his third brother.

Surviving family members are convinced that mesothelioma, which causes fluid to build in the body, killed family patriarch Louis Bertrand. He died in 1967 at age 68 of a burst stomach.

The oldest son, Louis Francis Bertrand, was next, dying in 1970 at age 42 of a heart attack. There was never an asbestos-related diagnosis, but he had had problems breathing, and there had been no family history of heart disease. Seven years later, 20-year-old Louis Jr. stepped into the family's back yard and shot himself to death.

"He wanted to be with his dad," Bob Bertrand said, choking back tears.

In 1985, 51-year-old Eugene Bertrand, who suffered from asbestosis, died of a heart attack. Asbestosis is known to contribute to heart attacks by limiting the flow of oxygen to the heart. Then in 1993, mesothelioma took the life of Raymond Bertrand, age 57.

Bob Bertrand's sister, Alice, married an insulator, Jim Garfield, who died of mesothelioma at age 63 in 1992. Garfield's brother, Mark, also an insulator, died in 1998 of asbestos-related disease, Alice Garfield said.

Alice Garfield, 72, of White Bear Lake, and Bob Bertrand's wife, Jacqueline, 61, have been diagnosed with asbestosis -- apparently from shaking dust off their husbands' clothes.

"It's unreal . . . just unreal," Bertrand said of asbestos' toll on his family. "I can't even put it into words."

Firsthand

The Bertrands are among a long line of insulators whose lives turned tragic because of the asbestos disaster. No union has been harder hit than the International Association of Heat and Frost Insulators and Asbestos Workers.

"Nobody knows the hideous devastation that's been caused by asbestos better than the asbestos workers," said Terry Lynch, the political and legislative director for the 30,000-member union. "We know it firsthand."

Grogan said mesothelioma victims typically "suffer from six to 13 months," often from fierce pain as tumors press against nerve endings along their rib cages.

"The guys that die from pure asbestosis choke themselves to death for three and four years," he said. "They cough a minimum of 20 hours a day. I don't think they get two hours sleep."

Huffing and puffing

Bob Bertrand, who spent 45 years as an insulator, said it wouldn't surprise him if insurers knew of asbestos' threats, noting that manufacturers "kept on pushing" the products after learning of the dangers.

When he learned he had mesothelioma on Oct. 4, 2001, he said, a doctor told him: "You've got four to six months and you're dead."

His children scrambled to research the disease, he said, but "every time they'd come up with something, it'd make you sadder, knowing that these companies knew that the stuff was dangerous."

Despite his fast-moving cancer, he went back to work, huffing and puffing through the year's end, before retiring.

With his condition inoperable because the cancer had spread to both lungs, Bertrand recently went to see Dr. Arkadiusz Dudek, a University of Minnesota oncologist experimenting with a chemotherapy approach for late-term mesothelioma patients.

The treatments sapped Bertrand's strength but shrank the tumors by 25 percent -- enough to ease his pain and keep him alive.

Bertrand said he has moved beyond anger to acceptance of his plight.

"I got the extra time to work out everything with my family."