As much as the headlines may trumpet falling rates of uninsured people, as many as 750,000 people are still unable to access or afford insurance in our state. If you’ve been diagnosed with a difficult disease like mesothelioma and don’t have health insurance to cover the costs of treatment, don’t lose hope. Louisiana hospitals and cancer treatment centers typically have programs available to help uninsured patients access the mesothelioma care they need. Once you are diagnosed, you may also be eligible for certain benefits and programs that were not open to you before. Mesothelioma is caused by exposure to asbestos fibers, and most people who’ve suffered illnesses as a result of asbestos were exposed in the workplace. Louisiana is home to many sites that are known to have caused significant pain and suffering through years or decades of contamination with asbestos. Many military specialties were also the source of significant asbestos exposure until…Read More
In modern medicine, a simple blood test can be used to diagnose a variety of ailments and give doctors definitive evidence of particular conditions. While blood tests are used by doctors to help diagnose mesothelioma, mesothelioma blood tests typically only provide additional evidence as part of a broader diagnostic panel. Biopsies and imaging technologies continue to be the mainstay diagnostic tools in detecting mesothelioma in Louisiana. That doesn’t mean that blood tests don’t have value for patients at higher risk of developing mesothelioma, such as people who worked at asbestos-contaminated worksites. A variety of mesothelioma blood tests exist, with varying degrees of accuracy and availability. But the most trusted by healthcare professionals today is the MESOMARK assay. The MESOMARK assay is sensitive to a particular protein that the body releases in the presence of mesothelioma cells. The MESOMARK blood test can provide enormous advantages to patients in certain circumstances. Unfortunately, not…Read More
