A Cancer Care Approach Tailored to Seniors May Have Better Results

Geriatric assessment can play a crucial role in cancer care, reports National Public Radio . The assessment includes questionnaires and tests to rate individuals' physical, mental, and functional capacity, accounting for social lives, daily activities, and goals. This approach can help doctors better estimate who will likely develop toxicities to chemotherapy and other serious potential complications of treatment. Such assessment does not yield complete accuracy, but "it's better than the clinician eyeball test," says University of Rochester Professor Supriya Gupta Mohile. "If I didn't do a geriatric assessment and just looked at someone I wouldn't have the same information." Mohile notes geriatric oncologists take a different approach than many other oncologists, with emphasis on avoiding toxicities in the treatment regimen. A study in the Journal of Geriatric Oncology found that in 197 persons with cancer 70 years and older, 27 percent of the treatment recommendations they received from the tumor board differed from those received after completing a geriatric assessment, which called for less intensive treatment or palliative care. Moreover, a 2017 Cochrane review of 29 studies of geriatric assessments on persons who had been hospitalized found that such subjects were more likely to be alive and at home 12 months later, versus those who received standard care.