Prevalence, Diagnosis, and Course of Mesothelioma (Chapter 11, Asbestos and Disease) (1978)

This book chapter reviewed the prevalence, diagnosis and clinical course of mesothelioma, combining experience from studies at Mount Sinai with reports published by others. It gathered prevalence reports by population group, including factory, insulation and shipyard workers and people living near asbestos plants or in asbestos workers' families. The authors cautioned that no national estimate could be made, since the same cases may appear in more than one group, and that reported numbers are thought to understate true occurrence. From the incomplete data, they judged prevalence among certain United States worker groups to be higher than anywhere else. The chapter cited a South African registry in which 47 of 360 cases had no known exposure. At Mount Sinai, fluid cytology was useful in one-half to two-thirds of cases investigated. Of nine patients given combination chemotherapy, five improved in symptoms and four had tumor shrinkage. The chapter described the disease as invariably fatal. The authors found treatment results disappointing and agreed with Elmes that prevention is far more effective than cure.

We wrote this plain-English summary from the full article with the help of AI, and a second AI model checked each sentence against the article. It is not the authors' wording; the abstract and the article are their own account.

From J-M's medical library

This copy comes from the Johns-Manville medical library. It was among the papers J-M kept in its medical library without an index entry.

We publish pages from a book for research and commentary: it shows what the medical literature in a leading asbestos company's own library said on the subject, and when. Our summary above is our own reading of it. The copyright stays with the publisher.