Elderly can undergo aggressive lung cancer treatments

For many years, the trend in North America has been to treat elderly people who have lung cancer with conservative chemotherapy. The reason for this is that it was always felt that the elderly were fragile and would not be able to tolerate the harsh chemotherapeutic drugs. Well, now a major study indicates that this thinking is wrong. A recent study from France reveals that elderly patients lived longer, cancer free and had a decent quality of life after aggressive chemotherapy.

"These results demonstrate that a more intensive regimen given to younger patients can be effective and tolerable in this (elderly) group," said lead researcher Dr. Elisabeth Quoix

Younger patients with lung cancer have always been offered a combination of drugs but elderly have in the past only been offered one drug. This was chiefly because of physicians fear that the elderly may not tolerate the side effects well.

Researchers in France looked at 451 patients between the age of 70- 89 and offered them single or multiple chemotherapeutic drugs for their lung cancer. The study had to be stopped because the researchers observed that the overall survival period for patients given the combination chemotherapy was 10.4 months compared to 6.2 months for those getting only one drug. They also noticed that patients receiving two cancer drugs lived twice as long and the side effects were easily tolerated.

Dr. Mark Kris, chief of thoracic oncology at Memorial-Sloan Kettering Hospital in New York and ASCO representative, said that the impact of this trial is  "huge."

Kris says "the message of this paper is really important" because it encourages oncologists to look beyond their patient's chronological age and if the patient is fit enough, doctors should have the "confidence to give the best treatment available to older adults with the anticipation of getting the same benefits and side effects."

Kris said, "Of all the trials, this one is the one with the most immediate impact" because doctors and patients can take this information and use it next week.