It’s more common for men to develop pleural mesothelioma, a cancer of the lining of the lung, than women. That’s likely due to the greater presence of men in the kinds of heavy industrial jobs such as ship building, mining and automotive repair where asbestos was prevalent, particularly in earlier decades.
Still, mesothelioma is not exclusive to men or gender specific. Women also develop the disease associated with asbestos exposure, sometimes from laundering the dust-covered clothes of a family member who brings home asbestos on their work clothing. A group of researchers at Brigham and Woman’s Hospital in Boston, Mass., has published a new study in the Annals of Thoracic Surgery evaluating the role of gender in survival with mesothelioma.
The researchers examined the cases of more than 700 patients who underwent surgery at Brigham and Woman’s Hospital between 1987 and 2008 to treat mesothelioma. Of the patients, approximately 145 were women.
The researchers observed that women generally tended to develop the disease at a younger age and to live longer with the disease after surgery. Given that, the researchers say women patients with mesothelioma are good candidates for aggressive treatments. including extrapleural pneumonectomy, surgery to remove a diseased lung and surrounding layer of tissue known as the pleura. It is one of the major curative procedures performed on patients with mesothelioma, but not all patients are healthy enough to undergo the invasive surgery.
According to federal statistics compiled by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, 14,598 men and 3,485 women died of malignant pleural mesothelioma between 1999 and 2005 in the United States.



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