Does Age Matter When Planning Breast Cancer Treatment?

It shouldn’t, but it does. Elderly patients risk treatment discrimination, which has been confirmed in a research study presented September 24, 2011, at a cancer congress in Stockholm. Assuming they survive other age-related conditions, women diagnosed with breast cancer late in life are at greater risk of dying from the disease than are younger patients.

You’re Only as Old as You Feel and Act

How can this discrimination exist? Some of it has to do with how the elderly are viewed--they’re often thought to be “too old” to withstand chemotherapy or radiation or other treatments. But this claim crumbles in the face of the many 80-year-old women today who are fit as fiddles and who go swimming at the Y, eat healthy meals, and have strong hearts. Conversely, there are 55-year-olds out there who have heart disease, respiratory complications, and clogged arteries, and whose bodies behave much older than their chronological age would predict.

Grounded in Overall Health

If you or a loved one find yourself in a situation where you are diagnosed but then are considered “too old” for treatment, and this assessment has been based solely on your birth year, insist instead that your treatment be based on the overall state of your health.

Here at Hopkins, our Breast Cancer Tumor Board meets ever Wednesday evening. The doctors are always careful to provide the team with every bit of information about the patient’s overall health, any co-morbidities that she may have, and whether she’s a “young” 75-year-old or an “elderly” 60-year-old. Age isn’t what matters; a woman’s overall health is!