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Study backs drugs and surgery for Elderly with colon cancer
Elderly people with colon cancer can benefit from chemotherapy after surgery as much as younger patients can, a study has found, and the side effects are no worse. Some doctors have been reluctant to prescribe chemotherapy for patients over 65, and in some cases patients themselves have rejected it. "Older people will sometimes say, `I'm not sure I'll save enough years of life to make that worth it to me,' " said Dr. Richard Goldberg, a cancer specialist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and an author of an article about the study being published today in the New England Journal of Medicine. "What this study says is, `If you're among the more robust sexagenarians or octogenarians, we can give you data to say that it will,' " Dr. Goldberg said. Doctors at the Mayo Clinic and six other centers in North America and Europe pooled seven studies comparing surgery alone for colon cancer with surgery followed by chemotherapy, the standard treatment. Altogether, the analysis involved 3,351 patients of various ages who had cancer that had spread; some of the patients were under 50 and some over 70. Older patients generally tolerated chemotherapy as well as younger ones. Over all, chemotherapy increased the rate of those who survived for at least five years to 71 percent from 64 percent, with no significant difference between age groups. While the percentage increase may seem small, said Daniel J. Sargent, a Mayo Clinic statistician who led the study, the improvement for "a disease as prevalent as colorectal cancer results in the saving of thousands of lives each year." |
