A report from Macmillan Cancer Support would suggest that older cancer patients often do not receive the same amount of treatment as younger patients due to an assumption that they would be unable to cope with the treatment.
A lot of older patients do not go through with treatment because they lack support at home or do not have access to transport, the report said. The Age Old Excuse: the under-treatment of older cancer patients report indicates that many older people are being denied access to the best medicine and receive fewer radiotherapy and chemotherapy treatments than other patients. Macmillan Cancer Support believes that 14,000 cancer deaths in people aged over 75 could be avoided each year if factors such as under-treatment and late diagnosis were addressed. The study also found that trials of new cancer treatments often do not include a sufficient number of older patients to help doctors improve existing forms of treatments. Instead, they often make general recommendations on the basis of someone’s age and ignore patients’ individual fitness levels.
