Ask a Doctor About Mesothelioma

Most people who contact us start with a question they feel embarrassed to ask anyone else. There is no such thing as a stupid question about this disease, and you are not wasting our time.

Send us your question using the form below and a member of our patient support team will get back to you. We can help you understand what you have been told, find a mesothelioma specialist near you, and work out what to ask at your next appointment. There is no charge for any of it.

What this page is not. We are not a medical practice. Nobody here can diagnose you, read your scans, or tell you which treatment to choose, and we will not pretend otherwise. Those decisions belong to you and your treating physician. What we can do is help you get to the right specialist and make sure you walk into that appointment knowing what to ask.

The questions we are asked most

These are the questions that come up again and again on our helpline. The answers below are general information compiled by our editorial team from published medical sources, including the National Cancer Institute, the American Cancer Society and the SEER cancer statistics program. They are not medical advice and they are not specific to your case.

Is mesothelioma the same thing as lung cancer?

No. They are two different diseases and people mix them up constantly. Mesothelioma grows in the mesothelium, the thin lining around the lungs, abdomen, heart or testicles. Lung cancer grows in the lung tissue itself. Asbestos can cause both, but they have different biology, different staging and different treatment. It is also possible to have both at the same time.

My husband worked around asbestos in the 1970s. Why is he only being diagnosed now?

This is the single most common question we get, and the answer is latency. Mesothelioma takes 20 to 50 years to develop after the first asbestos exposure, and the average is around 30 to 40 years. A man exposed in his twenties in the 1970s is being diagnosed in his seventies now. The median age at diagnosis is 72. Nothing was missed. That is simply how this disease behaves.

He smoked for thirty years. Doesn’t that mean this is not from asbestos?

Smoking does not cause mesothelioma. Asbestos exposure is the only confirmed cause. Smoking matters for a different disease, asbestos-related lung cancer, where smoking and asbestos together raise the risk far more than either alone. If your husband smoked and was exposed to asbestos, that history does not disqualify him from anything. It is worth telling a doctor and an attorney the full picture rather than leaving the smoking out.

I never worked with asbestos in my life. How could I have mesothelioma?

You do not have to have handled it yourself. A great deal of mesothelioma in women comes from secondary exposure, most often from washing the work clothes of a husband, father or son who did handle it. Living near an asbestos mine, factory or contaminated site can do it too. There is no known safe level of exposure, and brief or light exposure decades ago is enough. If you cannot think of any exposure, that is worth investigating rather than assuming there was none.

What treatments are actually available?

More than most people expect. Surgery options include pleurectomy with decortication, which removes the lining and visible tumor while keeping the lung, and extrapleural pneumonectomy, which is more aggressive and less commonly used now. For mesothelioma in the abdomen, cytoreductive surgery combined with heated chemotherapy delivered into the abdominal cavity, known as HIPEC, has changed outcomes considerably. Standard chemotherapy is pemetrexed with cisplatin. Immunotherapy is also approved. Most patients do best with a combination rather than any single treatment. Which of these applies to you is a conversation for a mesothelioma specialist.

Is immunotherapy an option for mesothelioma?

Yes. The FDA approved nivolumab combined with ipilimumab on October 2, 2020 for pleural mesothelioma that cannot be removed by surgery. It was the first new approved treatment for this disease in sixteen years. In the CheckMate 743 trial, median overall survival was 18.1 months on that combination against 14.1 months on chemotherapy alone. Whether it is right for a particular person depends on their case, and that is a question for their treating oncologist.

What does the survival statistic actually mean?

Be careful with these numbers, because they are widely misquoted. Median survival across all stages of pleural mesothelioma is roughly 12 to 21 months. Median means the halfway point, not an average and not a prediction for any individual. Half of patients live longer than that figure, and some live very much longer. Stage at diagnosis, cell type, age, general health and access to a specialist center all move the number. We would rather give you the honest figure with that context than either frighten you or tell you something comforting that is not true.

Is mesothelioma in the abdomen different from the kind in the lungs?

Yes, and the difference matters. About 75% of cases are pleural, in the lining around the lungs. About 20% are peritoneal, in the lining of the abdomen. Peritoneal mesothelioma generally responds better to treatment. With cytoreductive surgery and HIPEC, published series report five-year survival as high as 50 to 60% in carefully selected patients, which is far better than the historical figures people find online. If the diagnosis is peritoneal, it is worth asking specifically about a center that performs HIPEC.

Does it matter where he is treated?

It can matter a great deal. Mesothelioma is rare, at roughly 3,000 diagnoses a year in the United States, so many excellent oncologists will only see a handful of cases in a career. Specialist centers see them constantly, offer the widest range of surgical and multimodal options, and run the clinical trials. Asking for a second opinion at a mesothelioma center is a normal and reasonable thing to do, and no good doctor will take offence at it. We can help you find one at no cost.

Isn’t asbestos banned in the United States?

Not completely, and this surprises people. The United States has never had a full ban. The EPA issued a partial ban in 1989 that the courts largely overturned. In 2024 the EPA finalized a ban on chrysotile asbestos, the only type still in active commerce here. None of that removes the asbestos already sitting in millions of existing buildings. People doing demolition, renovation and maintenance work are still being exposed today.

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Please read before you send. This form does not reach a doctor and no one here can give you medical advice, a diagnosis, or an opinion on your treatment. Your question goes to our patient support team, who will get back to you and can help you find a mesothelioma specialist. If this is a medical emergency, call 911. For questions about your own care, speak to your treating physician.

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The questions we are asked most

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