Mesothelioma is a lethal disease, for which there have been relatively few effective treatment options historically. Of the three types of cellular variations found in mesothelioma, the sarcomatoid malignant cell is the most difficult to treat and the rarest among mesothelioma cases. In recent years, some inroads have been made in finding effective chemotherapy combinations, and in developing effective "trimodality" treatment which combines the aggressive use of surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation treatment.
Nevertheless the life expectancy for mesothelioma patients as a whole is still a year or less, even for those with relatively early diagnoses. One of the problems with sarcomatoid mesothelioma treatment is obtaining an accurate diagnosis, because the symptoms and test characteristics for this disease are similar if not identical to other forms of cancer including various forms of sarcoma and lymphoma. The correct diagnosis is imperative for prompt initiation of the correct treatment.
Live Expectancy Studies
The most immediate data on life expectancy for mesothelioma patients is found in medical research papers or in clinical research trials. One study that isolated sarcomatoid mesothelioma found 326 cases of this form of the disease among the records on 2,000 mesothelioma patients. Sixteen percent of the sample was sarcomatoid cases as opposed to epithelioid or biphasic cellular variations. This same study found that survival data was available for 260 of the cases studied; fifty percent of the patients were alive four months after diagnosis. Only ten percent were alive after one year, and five percent after eighteen months. This same study cites the survival rate for non-sarcomatoid mesothelioma patients at an average of 16 months.
The statistics kept by the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health do not differentiate between sarcomatoid and epithelioid or biphasic mesothelioma. There are only 3,000 new diagnoses of the disease each year, making it one of the rarest forms of cancer. Sarcomatoid mesothelioma is the rarest form of a rare disease; accordingly the federal data on it is sparse.
Medical Reports
There are dozens of journal articles that cite the review of malignant mesothelioma cases for a period of time in one geographic region or another. Some of those cite survival statistics, which provide anecdotal snapshots of the difference between the various cellular types of mesothelioma but no definitive data on overall survival rates. One examination of mesothelioma cases for Singapore for the years 1997- 2007 showed the median survival time for epithelioid mesothelioma patients to be 10.2 months and for sarcomatoid mesothelioma patients to be 1.4 months. All of these cases were State III or Stage IV diagnoses.
Another study examining subtypes of sarcomatoid malignancies looked at 27 cases of mesothelioma of which fifty nine percent were sarcomatoid diagnoses. The average survival time for all patients was six months, a figure cited by the authors as the overall average for sarcomatoid mesothelioma. What emerges from these studies is an average survival time for epithelioid mesothelioma of twelve to sixteen months and for sarcomatoid mesothelioma as six months or less.
1. Sarcomatoid mesothelioma: a clinical-pathologic correlation of 326 cases. Klebe et al, Modern Pathology, March 2009
2. Malignant Pleural Mesothelioma in Singapore, Yip et al, Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer, 2011
3. Malignant mesothelioma with heterologous elements: clinicopathological correlation of 27 cases and literature review. Klebe et al, Modern Pathology, September 2008
