Follow-up after treatment for mesothelioma
Follow-up care lets your healthcare team keep track of your health for a period of time after treatment ends. This important part of cancer care is often shared among the cancer specialists and your family doctor. They will help you manage treatment side effects and monitor you for any signs that the cancer has grown.
Follow-up care may not seem that important to you, especially if your treatment was long or very hard. You may find the idea of follow-up care stressful because it reminds you of your cancer experience or because you are worried about what a test might reveal. Talk to your healthcare team about how you feel and about why follow-up matters. Your healthcare team is there to help.
Schedule for follow-up visits
Follow-up after mesothelioma treatment varies because there are no standard guidelines. Follow-up visits are tailored to your situation and the type of treatment that you had.
Don’t wait until your next scheduled appointment to report any new symptoms and symptoms that don’t go away. Tell your healthcare team if you have:
- increased pain in the chest or abdomen
- increased coughing or shortness of breath
- swelling of the abdomen
During follow-up visits
During a follow-up visit, your healthcare team will usually ask questions about the side effects of treatment and how you’re coping.
Your doctor may do a physical exam, including:
- listening to the chest
- feeling the abdomen
Tests are often part of follow-up care. You may have:
- A CT scan to see how well treatments are shrinking or slowing the growth of mesothelioma. It may also be done to check if mesothelioma has come back (recurred) after treatment.
- A chest or abdominal x-ray may be done if you have any new symptoms.
If the cancer has come back, you and your healthcare team will discuss a plan for your treatment and care.
Find out more about follow-up
The following are questions that you can ask the healthcare team about follow-up after treatment for cancer. Choose the questions that fit your situation and add questions of your own. You may find it helpful to take the list to the next appointment and to write down the answers.
- What is the schedule for follow-up visits?
- How often is follow-up scheduled with the cancer specialist?
- Who is responsible for follow-up visits?
- What will happen at a follow-up visit?
- What tests are done on a regular basis? How often are they done?
- Are there any symptoms that should be reported right away? Who do I call?
- Who can help me cope with long-term side effects of treatment?
Your trusted source for accurate cancer information
With just $5 from readers like you, we can continue to provide the highest quality cancer information for over 100 types of cancer.
We’re here to ensure easy access to accurate cancer information for you and the millions of people who visit this website every year. But we can’t do it alone.
If everyone reading this gave just $5, we could achieve our goal this month to fund reliable cancer information, compassionate support services and the most promising research. Please give today because every contribution counts. Thank you.