It is not untypical that people confuse mesothelioma and adenocarcinoma with each other. And the truth of the matter is, even Oncologist misdiagnosed one or the other occasionally. But there is a clear distinction between the two health conditions. They both have different causes and also require specific treatment regimens. Mesothelioma is almost exclusively caused by asbestos exposure. Asbestos consists of toxic fibers that are friable. That means, the fibers can be broken up easily under small pressure. As a result, if an asbestos containing material gets disturbed or damaged, those fibers are likely to contaminate the air, which puts anybody onsite at a high risk of inhaling or ingesting them. Once the particles enter the respiratory system and become lodged, they can trigger the development of several asbestos induced illnesses, such as asbestosis, kidney cancer, lung-cancer and mesothelioma.
Adenocarcinoma, however, can not be conclusively linked to a single cause, but is attributed to a variety of factors including genetic inheritance, radon exposure, smoking or exposure to toxins in general.
In other words, it is absolutely possible that exposure to asbestos can cause adenocarcinoma, but it is certainly not the only potential cause. The adenocarcinoma is a cancerous disease which affects the so called epithelial cells. Mesothelioma can also affect the epithelial cells; however, the majority of all cases is associated with the cancer of the mesothelium, which is a connective tissue that is located between and around several organs. Another reason why the two illnesses might get misdiagnosed for each other: adenocarcinoma can spread into the mesothelium and can therefore be mistaken as mesothelioma.
In order to differentiate the cancers from each other and to make a conclusive diagnosis, a biopsy can be performed which evaluates the cells of the tissue sample under high magnification and also uses protein markers, to clearly identify the kind of malignant disease. As mentioned earlier, both cancers require different treatments, and it is therefore important to make a reliable diagnosis as early as possible. The adenocarcinoma is known to be an aggressive cancer and frequently begins to spread before it is being detected. The symptoms of both conditions resemble each other, which obviously makes the detection and diagnosis even harder.