gms | German Medical Science

The incidence of most tumours is increasing with age and most of the newly diagnosed tumours are found in patients older than 65 years and more than half of the patients who die of tumour are older than 70 years. Till now clinical studies did not take in account this fact sufficiently. Older patients or those with typical multimorbidity of elderly patients were often excluded from studies. Therefore the proportion of elderly patients is not representative in most studies. On the other hand there is gaining experience in geriatric oncology which demonstrates that treatment results of elderly patients are comparable to those of younger patients, but there must be considered some characteristic aspects of elderly patients prior to therapy, such as impaired organ function, comorbidity, pharmacokinetics, or social status. Recent studies take these facts in account and elderly patients are not excluded by age automatically. Furthermore there are a lot of studies in progress which investigate tumour biology, the safety of treatment, and the influence of comorbidity especially in elderly cancer patients. Table 1 [Tab. 1] shows an overview which studies are in progress in Germany including especially elderly patients. To increase the proportion of elderly patients in those studies barriers must be surmounted in study protocols, in logistics, and as well in physicians as in patients.