Elderly women who are diagnosed with breast cancer risk being under-treated because of their age, thus increasing the chances of their dying from the disease, an expert said yesterday.
Prof Christos Markopoulos from Athens University Medical School, Greece, said the higher absolute death rate amongst elderly women with breast cancer suggests they are not receiving standard treatment.
He is due to speak at the 2011 European Multidisciplinary Cancer Congress, in Stockholm, Sweden, tomorrow about the findings of a study.
Prof Markopoulos, who is also chair of the Hellenic Society of Breast Surgeons, will say there is evidence that the older a woman becomes, the less radiotherapy or chemotherapy she has.
His study used 9,766 patients in the Tamoxifen Exemestane Adjuvant Multinational (TEAM) trial to examine competing causes of death in post-menopausal women with early breast cancer.
Participants were treated with exemestane for five years or tamoxifen for 2.5 years followed by exemestane for 2.5 years. After five years, the trial had found no difference in outcomes between the two treatments.
The women were classified by their age at diagnosis and three groups established: those under 65 years; 65 and 75; over 75.
Although the risk of dying from causes other than breast cancer was higher in elderly patients, the risk of dying of breast cancer also increased with age.
“For those not suffering from other conditions or those who have survived other conditions, deaths from breast cancer are higher compared to younger patients with the same tumour characteristics," said Professor Markopoulos.
“This probably means that old women with breast cancer are being under-treated as doctors think they will die from something else.
“[However] we observed that radiotherapy was administered less frequently and administration of chemotherapy sharply decreased with increasing age. Thus, it is most likely that under-treatment of the elderly may explain the worse age-specific breast cancer outcome found in our study.”
Professor Michael Baumann, president of the European Cancer Organisation (ECCO), said: “Elderly patients have often been considered as being not fit for state-of-the-art cancer care.
“Educational efforts, but also detailed research on predictors and supportive measures, are key to make sure that all cancer patients, irrespective of age, receive evidence based, best individual treatment approaches.”
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