How long do I have to live? It�s a question that often follows the devastating news of a mesothelioma diagnosis.

Mesothelioma is an aggressive asbestos-related cancer that forms in the protective lining of the chest, the abdomen, the heart, and the testicles. It can take 10 to 50 or more years after a person�s first exposure to asbestos for mesothelioma to develop, but once diagnosed, the disease can kill in a matter of months.

Unfortunately, most patients are diagnosed only after the cancer has progressed because the symptoms of mesothelioma mirror other, more common illnesses, making the cancer hard to detect. Oftentimes, this means mesothelioma patients are not candidates for surgical care and die within a few months to a little over a year of first experiencing symptoms.

Although there is no cure for mesothelioma, the survival rate is rising as researchers learn more about the deadly disease. More mesothelioma patients than ever before are living for at least one year after diagnosis, and some patients have even survived for five and 10 years. Still, the current five-year survival rate for mesothelioma is only 10 percent.