What are the symptoms of pleural mesothelioma?

Pleural mesothelioma begins as small nodules on the lining of lungs. These nodules grow larger and slowly cover the entire pleural lining eventually completely encasing the lungs. In earlier stages of tumor growth, symptoms are non-specific such as fever and night sweats. Initially, the disease may be mistaken for pneumonia. Gradually increasing tumor often leads to accumulation of fluid into the pleural cavity (known as pleural effusion). The right sided chest involvement is slightly more common. The fluid compresses the lungs and leads to progressive shortness of breath and dry cough. Sometimes, large amount of fluid accumulates rapidly within hours leading to sudden onset of breathlessness. In advanced cases, patients may complain of chest pain due to spread of the cancer to bony chest wall.