I want to spend a bit of time today talking all about desmoplastic mesothelioma. We’ll learn what it is, what you can do about it and where you can find any help that you might need. Lung cancers generally are terrible and this is especially true of asbestos lung mesothelioma and desmoplastic mesothelioma. But firstly, what is desmoplastic mesothelioma?
Desmoplastic mesothelioma is a rare type of mesothelioma and more commonly known as a rare version of the diffuse malignant mesothelioma. That sounds all very interesting and like gobbledygook. To try and make it a little easier to understand, let’s chop up the words into bite sized pieces and see what they mean. Diffuse means spread out or covering a large area. Malignant in the medical field generally means uncontrolled growth that usually leads to death and is not well treated. Mesothelioma is a cancer that attacks connective tissue and more specifically the lining of the lungs or abdomen and abdominal wall. Peritoneal mesothelioma is more specifically related to the connective tissue of the abdomen and the abdominal wall.
So now we have an idea of what a diffuse malignant mesothelioma is. But we also need to understand what makes the desmoplastic mesothelioma desmoplastic. Desmoplastic is a sub type of mesothelioma as we’ve mentioned that is characterized as a sarcomatoid mesothelioma that has collagenized stroma with a predominant storiform appearance. A little bit like Greek again right? Or in this case Latin 
So let’s break it up.
Sarcomatoid relates to sarcoma and sarcoma is just the broad umbrella term for one of the 4 types of cancer, in this case, it is cancer that affects the connective tissues in the body. But we already knew that geesh! Okay so now onto the next couple of words, collagenized stroma. Collagen is a protein and stroma is the network tissue structure of the connective tissue we’re talking about. Sounds like these medical folk like to repeat themselves. So collagenized stroma just basically means that the connective tissue that is infected with the cancer has too much stiff protein in it. And storiform just means the shape, in this case irregular or whorled like your fingerprints.
Okay, so let’s see if we can condense this all into a single sentence that most of us will understand when we see the words desmoplastic mesothelioma. We can say that desmoplastic mesothelioma is a rare cancer of the connective tissue of the lungs and/or abdomen where the cells or network of this connective tissue is especially stiffened from excess protein that forms in the cellular network of this connective tissue giving it an irregular appearance. Now that wasn’t too hard was it? Oh yeah, it is also malignant which means it’s very bad, very likely to be fatal.
So this type of cancer is similar to malignant pleural mesothelioma which in this case just means specifically related to the lungs. That’s what pleural means. Now how can you tell if you might have the early signs of lung cancer or more specifically asbestos mesothelioma. Well this is a shortness of breath lung cancer where you can also feel chest pain and you might be losing a lot of weight. If you worked with asbestos as a tradesperson, miner or other worker there is a likely chance that you might have asbestos desmoplastic mesothelioma.
The only way to find out for certain is through a biopsy. And sadly, there is no safe lower limit for asbestos exposure and I hate to say that prognosis is not good. If you have or you suspect you might have desmoplastic mesothelioma please see a doctor and get biopsied. I also encourage you to see an asbestos lawyer or asbestos attorney mesothelioma as there is asbestosis compensation out there to help with costs and to offer just a marginal token of comfort.