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Elderly
'denied cancer surgery' Elderly
women are still being denied potentially life-saving surgery for breast
cancer because of their age. The claims will be made
by senior doctors and other leading experts at a conference in They come two years
after ministers published a national service framework for older people
and pledged to stamp out age discrimination in the NHS. However, experts say
the problem still exists and in many cases is resulting in women dying
needlessly. The conference is being
organized by the charities Cancer Research 'Too old' It will hear that women
over the age of 70 are most likely to miss out on surgery, largely because
doctors believe they are too old to have an operation. "There is a myth
that women over 70 will not live long because they are too frail,"
said Ian Fentiman, professor of oncology at Guy's and According to Professor
Fentiman, many of these women are given the breast cancer drug Tamoxifen
instead of surgery. Studies have suggested
that women with breast cancer who are given Tamoxifen without also having
surgery are less likely to survive than those who have both. He said the situation
is compounded by the fact that many elderly women do not realise they have
a higher risk of developing breast cancer compared to other women. "Opinion polls
have found that 60% of women over the age of 70 believe they have no risk
or are at a reduced risk of developing breast cancer," he told BBC
News Online. "However, age is a
major risk factor for the development of most cancers and certainly for
breast cancer. This means that 50% of breast cancers occur in women over
the age of 65 and 60% of deaths from breast cancer occur in that age
group." Professor Fentiman said
this message was not getting through to older women. "We as a
profession have some blame. We may not have informed people well
enough." He said women over 70
should be offered the same treatment as all other women with breast
cancer. "How we treat
older people is a test of our civilisation," he said. Doctors' attitudes Dr Richard Sullivan,
head of clinical programmes at Cancer Research "Women over 70 are
not getting the best treatment they should be getting for a variety of
reasons," he told BBC News Online. "One of these is
because of the attitude of the medical profession to treating women over
70. This is something we need to change. "We need to get
doctors to offer standard treatment to all women. It is really important
that they take biology rather than chronology into account. Some women of
70 are very fit." The Department of
Health said more elderly women have had surgery for breast cancer since
its national service framewrok was published two years ago. "The Older
People's National Service Framework sets out our commitment to address age
discrimination and provide treatment and care on the basis of clinical
need, and not age," said a spokeswoman. "This applies to
the treatment of breast cancer and since the framework's publication in
March 2001 significant progress has been made. "For example
between 2000 and 2002 breast cancer surgery for patients aged 85 and over
rose by 13%." Copyright
© 2002 Global Action on Aging |
