How do the doctors decide if I am healthy enough to have surgery?
One way doctors evaluate the general health of patients is by using a performance status scoring system. There are a number of ways to do this, but they are all done by answering specific questions related to how you feel and function. These are not laboratory tests. The best score, which is called 100% by the “Karnofsky” score, would be given to someone who feels completely well and has no symptoms or signs of disease. The opposite end, a 10% score would be given to someone who is extremely ill and on the verge of death. In between are various scores which have to do with how well you can perform work and activities of daily living, if you can be up and walking or are bed-ridden, or if you need intensive nursing and medical care.
A similar scale called the WHO (World Health Organization) or the Zubrod scores looks at the same time of information and rates people from 0, meaning completely well, to 4, which means cannot leave the sickbed.
For most of the surgical procedures meant to remove a lot of mesothelioma, a patient needs to be a 0 or a 1 on the WHO scale.