There's a long held assumption among health care providers that older women are less able to cope with certain breast cancer treatments than their younger counterparts. But recent findings made by researchers from Georgetown University's Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center indicate that older women's options in combating breast cancer may not as limited as their doctors might claim. Researcher, Jeanne Mandelblatt, found that despite women over the age of 65 comprising half of new breast cancer patients annually, this group fails to receive the range of treatments offered to younger women. Writing in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Mandelblatt claims that the leading reason for this failure is an unhealthy focus on the patient's age. "Older women who perceive more ageism in their interaction with providers are less likely to receive radiation or chemotherapy," says Mandelblatt.
Mandelblatt is appealing to doctors to base breast cancer treatment options not on a patient's age, but rather on their health and the disease itself. "In our work with older women, we found that 33 percent would choose chemotherapy if it would extend their lives by 12 or more months," said Mandelblatt.
Justifications for restricting potentially life saving treatments for older women include age related frailty and limited life span. But the new study suggests that a healthy older woman may handle harsher cancer treatments better than an unhealthy younger woman.
"We do not need more research to document what we already know: older women get less intensive treatment," says Mandelblatt. "What we need is an understanding of cancer in [women 65 or older with breast cancer]; tools that can help clinicians identify physiological reserve and ability to withstand the rigors of more aggressive treatments, and more consistent elicitation of women's informed preferences."
Source: Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center
