By now, most adults have figured out that nothing good can come from Googling your symptoms. Most serious illnesses cannot be diagnosed by symptoms alone; a diagnosis requires blood tests or other medical procedures to find out what is causing the symptoms. Mesothelioma is one of those diseases that is complicated to diagnose. The chances are very slim that someone will walk into a doctor’s office complaining of shortness of breath and a persistent cough and walk out knowing for sure that they have mesothelioma. It usually takes multiple tests, multiple visits, and multiple doctors to diagnose mesothelioma. After you receive a diagnosis, you can rely on the help of your medical team and also of a Houma mesothelioma lawyer.
The Only Way to be Sure of a Mesothelioma Diagnosis is Through a Tissue Biopsy
The earliest symptoms of mesothelioma are usually a persistent cough and shortness of breath, but these can be due to many different causes. Your doctor will do a chest X-ray to see if there are any abnormal masses in your lungs or chest cavity; the X-ray can show where the growths are, but it cannot tell the difference between benign tumors and cancerous ones. If there is an abnormal mass in your chest cavity and you have a history of asbestos exposure, the doctor might suspect that you are at risk for mesothelioma, but the doctor cannot be sure just from your medical history and your X-ray. Asbestos was everywhere in the 1960s, but not all Baby Boomers have mesothelioma.
The definitive test for mesothelioma is a tissue biopsy, which is where pathologists test cells from fluid that was extracted from your chest cavity or surgically removed from the abnormal mass. In most cases, you need to be under anesthesia during the biopsy, and the methods of surgery vary according to the location of the tumor. After the pathologists observe the cells under a microscope, they can tell whether the tumor is benign or cancerous, and whether it is mesothelioma or a different type of cancer.
Although blood tests cannot diagnose mesothelioma by themselves, they are a helpful adjunct to the other tests. Doctors might test for mesothelin, a protein that is present in high concentrations in the blood of patients with mesothelioma, ovarian cancer, pancreatic cancer, and lung cancer. The mesothelin levels in your blood, and especially the changes in levels over time, can provide information about how far the cancer has progressed and how well the treatment is working.
Contact the Law Office of Patrick H. Yancey About Mesothelioma Resulting From Asbestos Exposure
A mesothelioma lawyer can help you with the legal and financial aspects of living with mesothelioma. Contact the Law Office of Patrick H. Yancey in Houma, Louisiana to see if you have grounds for a lawsuit.