International trends in the clinical epidemiology of malignant pleural mesothelioma

The role of surgical treatment for malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM) is still subject to debate. A recent paper in the Annals of Thoracic Surgery explored treatment patterns for patients with MPM in the United States, based on information from the National Cancer Database (NCDB) (1). The patient series comprised 19,134 cases of MPM, diagnosed from 2004 to 2013, and 26% were treated by surgical intervention.