Doctors who specialize in cancer treatment choose what course of treatment to pursue for each patient. There are numerous options. There are no one size fits all treatment regimen for peritoneal mesothelioma sufferers. This is because of the relative rareness of the disease, the high mortality rate and low treatment success rate, and the few scientific studies to provide meaningful statistics.

While prospects for patients with mesothelioma have been bleak, doctors have been making progress. Treatments for cancer are traditionally surgery (taking out the tumor and surrounding tissue), radiation (killing the cancerous cells with radiation), and chemotherapy (poisoning the cancerous cells.) There are problems with all three. Traditional radiation therapy has not worked well with mesothelioma patients. In hopes to lessen damage to healthy tissue, researches are studying ways to aim radiation right at the tumor.

The mesothelial tissue around the tumor is removed by surgery. It is a grueling surgery with unknown benefits to patients. Most chemotherapy medication that work on other cancers typically do not work on mesothelioma, and combinations of chemotherapy agents have been tried, but without much success. Similar to radiation, focus in research is focusing on treating the physical location of the tumor with emphasis on the pleural cavity.

Many advanced techniques in cancer treatment are tried on mesothelioma patients because of its high fatality rate. Such treatments include anti-angiogenesis drugs like thalidomide and biologic therapies agent interleukin 2. A new drug that has shown results in improving survival is pemetrexed (brand name Alimta).

Before acting, oncologists review the stage of mesothelioma, position of the tumor, and age and health status of the patient. Two therapies that are extremely cutting-edge in fighting cancer are called photodynamic and gene therapy. Clinical trials using these techniques are being offered to some of those who have mesothelioma.