Multimodal Therapy / Treatment
In oncology, multimodal therapy or combined modality
treatment refers to a combination of two or more methods of treatment. It most often refers to any combination of
surgery,
radiation therapy, and
chemotherapy. If one form of treatment is considered the primary therapy and the other method is administered to assist in treating the
cancer, the medical community refers to the secondary treatment as adjuvant therapy (1).
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Certain cancers, such as breast cancer, are proven to be responsive to multimodal
treatments, and in some cases combining therapies can increase patient survival rates. Other types of cancer, respond well to one modality (1, 2). One major negative aspect of multimodal therapy is the increased stress and toxicity placed on the patient, and for this reason
doctors and patients must weigh the options carefully (1).
In the case of mesothelioma patients, a multimodal approach is common because the disease responds with only limited success to unimodal forms of treatment. In the case of malignant pleural mesothelioma, for example, a multimodal treatment may involve a pleurectomy (the surgical removal of the lining of the lung), followed by localized dose of chemotherapy, and radiation treatment afterwards (3).