Why Is it Important to See a Mesothelioma Specialist for a Biopsy?

[MUSIC PLAYING] It's really important that patients see a mesothelioma specialist, or at least get referred to one for a potential biopsy for mesothelioma, because specialists-- including myself-- we know what to look for, and we know how much tissue to get. And we do not want an inconclusive diagnosis, which can be very common if, say, a general surgeon, or maybe a thoracic surgeon that does the biopsy, that doesn't always have experience in this, or just assumes that the pleural effusion or the pleural thickening was related to infection. So they go in, and it's not a complete, thorough biopsy of different areas with full-thickness tissue. There's many things that I think you need to do, which is full-thickness tissue. You need to biopsy in different areas, and you also need to have your pathologists involved real-time. So that means frozen section. And what we mean by frozen section is that the pathologist real-time will send tissue down that can be frozen. They cut it into it, look at it on a slide, and they can tell me, how accurate's your sample? Oh, I see something, or oh, that's just fibrosis, or inflammation. It's very common to see mesothelioma go undiagnosed, even after a biopsy. More common with pleural effusion, but even with the biopsy where-- and I've seen many cases like this-- where the surgeon's biopsied, but they biopsy just the scarred area. There's an area that mesothelioma specialists will see that usually looks a little different than just scarred fibrotic or pleural plaques. The other common thing I see is people will biopsy plural plaques. Well, pleural plaques are very common in people with asbestos exposure, but 80% to 90% of those patients, that's not where the cancer is. It's not in the plaque. It's actually in the lining itself. The plaque is just asbestos-related fibers right there. But the cancer is usually not in there. So if you biopsy the plaque, you most likely will not see mesothelioma, versus right next to it may have been the smaller, thinner tissue that you didn't notice. And so I think that's why it's really important. But my first thing would say that at least they get a biopsy. Say they can't get-- if you live farther away, I think it's still important to at least have a thoracic surgeon get in there and biopsy it, versus watching and waiting for more scans, or just draining fluid. Yes, you can drain the fluid to feel better, but you need somebody to get in there, whether it be a pulmonologist that can do it, or your local thoracic surgeon-- at least get tissue earlier on. Now, if it still comes back inconclusive, and you're still unsure, or you're still having pleural effusions, even a better reason to go to helpful sites like asbestos.com. Talk to the patient advocates, the patient advisors, and have them refer you to a mesothelioma specialist that can just-- within a day-- get on the phone and get you another biopsy. We can do it through the same incision-- less invasive-- procedure, and then you'll know based on that whether or not you have mesothelioma. Or if you don't, then we know that we can let that rest. [MUSIC PLAYING]