MILAN – Those with white hair are the majority among cancer patients but the best of care and research does not seem to be for them. The elderly are too often cut off from the most advanced therapies and experimental protocols, without valid medical reasons, but only on the basis of age.
«DISCRIMINATE YOURSELF» – Is there a drug that reverses the prospects of survival? Not for them. All forty-year-olds receive it, for the elderly it is an exception. Does life expectancy double? Not for them, who stick to the statistics of thirty years ago. What a fierce group of oncologists does not hesitate to define as "serious and unacceptable discrimination" is taking place against patients over the age of sixty. The alarm was raised on the occasion of the Congress of the European Haematology Association (EHA) held in Barcelona, and the open access journal Ecancermedicalscience, founded by the European Institute of Oncology in Milan, has launched an awareness campaign involving doctors, patients and associations.
THE "GRANDPARENTS" STAY BEHIND – The most striking contrasts emerge precisely from oncohaematological diseases, as explained by Mario Boccadoro, director of the Department of Oncology and Hematology of the San Giovanni Battista hospital in Turin: «In the last ten years the survival of patients with multiple myeloma has doubled, but if we only consider patients over seventy, there is no advantage compared to the past. There is a disparity in treatment, the medical community remains attached to old treatment schemes, rarely resorting to new drugs already on the market, such as bortezomib, thalidomide and lenalidomide, which are very effective and much less toxic than the old chemotherapy".
LIFE-SAVING DRUG? AT 40 YEARS OLD – Even more shocking are the data collected by European cancer patient coalition, representing 300 patient organizations in 42 countries. The example is that of chronic myeloid leukemia, a disease that is usually diagnosed in old age, and whose history has been revolutionized by the advent of a drug, imatinib (or Glivec), the first truly "smart" drug. "Fifteen years ago only 30 patients out of a hundred were still alive eight years after diagnosis, today they are 93 out of a hundred" reports Jan Geissler, director of Ecpc and a rare case of a patient diagnosed with myeloid leukemia at the age of 28. According to data collected by the ECPC, imatinib, the "gold standard" for this form of leukemia, is administered to almost all forty-year-olds (93 per cent of women and 81 per cent of men) and less than half of patients between the ages of 70 and 80 (48 per cent of women and 44 per cent of men).
DISTRACTED RESEARCH, UNPREPARED DOCTORS - "Why? – asks Geissler – We need to understand the reasons for such an abyss. Age and concomitant diseases are not a valid reason. Let's make other assumptions." First: the elderly are largely absent from drug trials. Geissler recounts: «At the last Asco congress (the main international appointment for oncology, ed) have been
