What are the Symptoms of Mesothelioma?

Symptoms of mesothelioma generally do not present until many years, even decades, after the initial exposure to asbestos. Many of the most common mesothelioma symptoms go unnoticed for a long time because they are subtle and can be caused by other less serious diseases. Early symptoms are general few, subtle or completely absent. By the time the disease causes significant symptoms it is often quite advanced.

Because early mesothelioma symptoms are often minimal or missed, patients with a known exposure to asbestos are often recommended to undergo regular chest x-rays or other testing to monitor for the development of mesothelioma or other chronic effects of asbestos exposure (such as asbestosis).

The most common location for mesothelioma is the pleura, the membrane lining the lungs and chest cavity around the lungs. Therefore, many of the possible symptoms of mesothelioma are related to lung function. Some possible symptoms of mesothelioma occuring in the pleura (pleural mesothelioma) include:

• Chronic dry cough (with little or no phlegm production)
• Coughing up blood (called hemoptysis)
• Chronic pain in the chest or ribs
• Painful breathing
• Shortness of breath (called dyspnea)
• Difficulty swallowing (called dysphagia)
• Night sweats and/or fever
• Unexplained weight loss
• Fatigue
• Growth of masses under the skin of the chest

As noted above, most of these symptoms of mesothelioma are not specific to mesothelioma and can be caused by many different illnesses, making the recognition of mesothelioma difficult.

Symptoms of peritoneal mesothelioma, occuring in the lining of the abdominal cavity have some overlap, such as nightsweats and fever, weight loss, fatigue, and growths under the skin of the abdomen. However, other symptoms related to the tumor in the abdomen can occur such as swelling or pain in the abdomen and diarrhea or constipation.

Occurence of mesothelioma in other areas such as the pericardium around the heart are more rare.

Since mesothelioma is quite advanced by the time the diagnosis is made, many patients already have local or distant spread of the tumor in the body (metastasis). These metastases to other tissues and organs can cause their own symptoms. These symptoms will depend on the specific organ affected and the size and number of tumors.