Mesothelioma treatments vary, depending on both the type of mesothelioma case it is, and depending on the situation of the patient. Mesothelioma cases can include pleural mesothelioma, pericardial mesothelioma, and peritoneal mesothelioma, among others. Symptoms of mesothelioma do not appear immediately after exposure; the symptoms take about 20-50 years to appear, and by that time, it may be too late for the patient. After diagnosis, the patient usually has only about a few months, to a maximum of one year to live, because by the time diagnosis is conducted in most cases, the disease has already severely infected the patients. After the doctor diagnoses the patient, he/she suggests the best method the patient should take in treating himself/herself. The treatments may include surgical procedures, radiation, chemotherapy, immunotherapy, and heated intraoperative intraperitoneal chemotherapy. Treating mesothelioma patients is not a very easy task, and many conventional treatments which physicians have used have not proved to be extremely successful. By the time the diagnosis is made, the cancer and the disease has already affected the patient quite severely, leaving not too much hope for successful treatment. Surgery can be used alone as a treatment, or combined with other treatments as well. Probably what is the most common surgical procedure conducted is the pleurectomy/decortication procedure. Surgery does not have a very high survival rate; its survival rate is less than 10%. Radiation therapy may also be utilized, but most of the time, radiation is used to alleviate symptoms, rather than really treat the patient and cure them. The reason for this is that the mesothelioma tumor is resistant to radiotherapy, and therefore, radiation cannot truly treat the patient, only help them relieve their symptoms and prevent further damage with tumor expansion. Most of the time, radiation is utilized as a treatment, but usually, it is combined with other forms of treatment. Chemotherapy is also utilized, as well as immunotherapy, whose results can vary. For some patients, immunotherapy has proved successful, while for others, it has been very unsuccessful. Intrapleural inoculation of Bacillus Calmette-Guerin, or also known as BCG proved unsuccessful to the patients, and so did in vitro lysis by LAK cells. Not only was this procedure unsuccessful, but the patients suffered from severe side effects including cachexia and fever. There are some types of immunotherapy which have proven to be helpful, however. One of these forms s the interferon alpha, which has helped at least 20% of patients, and has decreased the size of their tumor mass by at least half. Another option is also available, which is the heated intraoperative intraperitoneal chemotherapy. During this procedure, the tumor is removed as much as could be possible by the surgeon. After the surgical procedure, chemotherapy is conducted in the abdominal region, and the chemotherapy agent is heated to anywhere from 40 degrees Celcius to 48 degrees Celcius. This process of placing drugs into the abdominal area and heating the area allows the tissues to absorb the drugs more efficiently. The malignant cells are destroyed as a result, rather than the normal cells.