Older people can benefit from a regime of two anti-cancer drugs as much as younger people, for lung cancer treatment.

It is commonly assumed that older people should not be subjected to aggressive chemotherapy for cancer as they may be unable to tolerate the side effects. But, according to a new trial, they can actually benefit from the same treatment that younger patients are offered.

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh tested three different dose regimes of the anticancer drugs paclitaxel and carboplatin in a group of 403 patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer. Of these, 111 were 70 or older.

In one group, survival time in the older patients was 49 weeks compared to 48 weeks in the younger patients. In the second group, the times were 26 weeks and 33 weeks. The last group survived for 63 weeks, if older, and 40 weeks if younger. Of course, there were individual variations in these median times. The side effect rate was similar between the two age groups. This suggests that patients with non small cell lung cancer, a hard to treat disease, should not be denied combination chemotherapy purely on the grounds of age.

Source

American Society of Clinical Oncology Meeting 31st May 2003