Elderly patients with colorectal cancer are often “undertreated”, with a patient’s age affecting an oncologist’s choice of treatment, an Australian study confirms.
Researchers from South Australia have found that elderly people are less likely to receive the combination chemotherapy despite finding it improved survival compared to single agent therapy.
Using data from the South Australian Clinical Registry for advanced colorectal cancer which involved 1745 patients, researchers found that the median overall survival of patients receiving first line combination chemotherapy was 24 months compared to 17 months among those receiving single agent fluoropyrimidine.
Only 40% of the over-70s group received chemotherapy compared to nearly three quarters of those under 70-years-old, according to the study published in the European Journal of Cancer.
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