Source: professional.cancerconsultants.com
Author: staff

Researchers from France have reported that patients 80 years of age or older with Stage I-II head and neck cancer have good outcomes following surgery or radiation therapy. The details of this study appeared in an early online publication in Cancer on October 17, 2008.[1]

Although most cancers occur in older individuals, this patient population is not proportionately represented in current clinical trials. In fact, many trials specifically exclude older patients on the assumption that they will not tolerate the protocol therapies. Thus, the results of many clinical trials are only applicable to the minority of younger patients with a specific type of cancer. In a recent study, researchers affiliated with ECOG looked at 53 patients with head and neck cancers who were 70 years or older. These patients were entered on two randomized trials and represented only 13% of the study group. However, the median age of patients with head and neck cancer is over the age of 65 years. This shows that a disproportionate number of younger patients are included in these trials. However, in this study the results in elderly patients were as good as for younger patients but with more treatment-related toxicities.

This study looked at the outcomes of 316 patients with head and neck cancer who were 80 years of age or older treated in a single institution from 1987 to 2006. Thirty-one percent of patients received surgery, and 57% received definitive radiotherapy. Patients with Stage I-II head and neck cancer had a median disease-specific survival that had not been reached and an overall survival of 42 months. For patients with more-advanced disease, the median disease-specific survival was 11 months and the overall survival was eight months. For patients with Stage I-II disease, treatment with curative intent was associated with improved survival.

Comments: These data add to the growing body of evidence that older patients should be treated aggressively if they have potentially curable disease.

Reference:
[1] Italiano A, Ortholan C, Dassonville O, et al. Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma in patients aged >80 years. Cancer. October 17, 2008.