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symptoms OF MESOTHELIOMA
Chest pains, short breaths and anemia are also symptoms of mesothelioma; it may take decades to ascertain whether you have got this malignant cancer.
Mesothelioma is a rare form of cancer infecting the outer lining of internal organs of the body like the lungs, stomach and heart. It can get difficult to diagnose this condition as its symptoms can take anything between 20 and 50 years to develop and show in its full form. In fact, some patients show no symptoms at all. Also, its symptoms often mimic other conditions and people tend to ignore or mistake them for other ailments.
One of the most common symptoms of mesothelioma is a pleural effusion, which is an accumulation of fluid between the parietal pleura and the visceral pleura. Both of these membranes are covered with meothelial cells and typically produce fluids that act as lubricants between the chest wall and the lung. The blood and lymph vessels absorb any excess fluid produced maintaining a balance. However, when too much fluid forms, it results in an effusion.
It’s this increase in fluid that leads to some of the apparent symptoms of mesothelioma like shortness of breath also known as "dyspnea", persistent cough and chest pain. However these are often non-specific and confused with conditions like pneumonia. The exact symptoms of mesothelioma often depend on the organs it is affecting. For instance, typical symptoms for pleural mesothelioma besides the aforementioned would be weakness, weight loss, lower back pain and difficulty in swallowing and those for peritoneal mesothelioma would include weight loss, abdominal pain, bowel obstruction, anemia and fever.
Mesothelioma symptoms are rarely felt until the disease has developed into an advanced stage. It is when more obvious symptoms like coughing up blood or dyspnea occur that medical advice is sought. Some common mesothelioma symptoms to be looked out for before things get out of hand include constant chest pain, dry chronic cough that worsens over time, hemoptysis (coughing up blood), dyspnea (difficulty breathing), fatigue, lung infection (pneumonia, bronchitis), swollen lymph nodes and wheezing.
Most of these signs can indicate other medical conditions too except dyspnea and hemoptysis, which are alarming and very typical of mesothelioma and require immediate medical attention. Swollen lymph nodes are a sign of infection, and may suggest the suffusion of the infected cells to other parts of the body.
The vague nature of most of the symptoms of mesothelioma makes it inevitable for those in high-risk groups to go through a reliable screening process to confirm the condition and go for the required treatment.
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