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| |  Older Patients With Metastatic Pancreatic Cancer Benefit From Chemotherapy: Presented at ASCO-GI By Ed Susman ORLANDO, Fla -- January 24, 2010 -- Patients aged 80 years and older who are diagnosed with metastatic pancreatic cancer appear to achieve life-extending benefits if treated with chemotherapy, researchers said here at the 2010 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium (ASCO-GI). “In our patients who received chemotherapy, the median survival was 4.9 months compared with a median survival of 1.7 months for those who did not receive treatment,” said Ibrahim Aldoss, MD, Creighton University Medical Center, Omaha, Nebraska, on January 23. “That is a highly significant difference [P > .0001].” During his poster presentation, Dr. Aldoss also noted that 3% of the patients who did not receive therapy were alive at 1 year compared with 13% of the patients who had treatment. Dr. Aldoss and colleagues examined records between 1995 and 2005 of 440 patients who were aged 80 years or older who were identified through the Veterans Affairs Cancer Registry and were diagnosed with metastatic pancreatic cancer. Of the patients, 83% received no treatment following the diagnosis, 12% received chemotherapy, 2% received radiotherapy alone, 1% received radiation and chemotherapy, and 2% of the patients underwent surgery. The researchers compared outcomes among the 367 patients who did not receive therapy and the 52 patients who received only chemotherapy. The median age of the patients in the no-treatment group was 83 years and the median age in the treatment group was 82 years. About 18% of the no-treatment group was current smokers and that group of patient had a median survival of 1.18 months compared with a survival of 1.57 months for patients who never smoked. “No significant difference in overall survival was observed based on tumour grade, race, or sex,” said Dr. Aldoss. He also noted that the study was limited because data were not available on status performance of the patients, a major consideration in treatment decisions at any age. However, he said the study indicates that treatment should not be withheld just on the basis of age. The 2010 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium is sponsored by the American Gastroenterological Association Institute, the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the American Society for Therapeutic Radiation Oncology, and the Society of Surgical Oncology. [Presentation title: Benefit of Chemotherapy in Very Elderly Patients (>= 80) With Metastatic Pancreatic Cancer: VA Central Cancer Registry (VACCR) Database Analysis. Abstract 232]
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