Too old to be treated, judged too 'beaten' to deserve anti-cancer therapies that are often expensive for the national coffers. "It happens at least to 50% of elderly patients who, on the other hand, thanks to a personalized treatment plan and new targeted drugs, could live longer, but above all better".
The alarm was sounded by Enrica Morra, director of Hematology at the Niguarda hospital in Milan, on the occasion of the meeting 'The management of the elderly patient in the main hematological neoplasms' in the Lombard capital. The expert calls for "a cultural revolution" that can break down the ideological wall of so-called 'ageism' once and for all: "A true form of discrimination that affects the majority of patients over 65".
Treatment denied due to injury. Simply because, in the era of youth at any cost, it doesn't seem worthwhile to invest resources for those who are at the end of life.
"The first thing to clarify is what is meant today by the term elderly", explains Morra to Pharmakronos. With the lengthening of the average life span, "the bar has gradually risen, to the point of considering the entire over 65-year-old range as 'elderly'".
But generalizing is wrong and leads to a dramatic misunderstanding, even more serious considering that "already as a result of normal ageing, the risk of cancer increases 10 times in men and 6 times in women": that is, it happens that "all elderly patients tend to be considered 'fragile', while this condition of fragility (associated with an unstable health situation, the presence of concomitant diseases and a rapid deterioration of the physical and cognitive state) actually corresponds to about a 10% of the over 6s 5.
Those who in medical jargon are called 'frail' patients". This means that, in the case of cancer, only in a small number of sick elderly people, anticancer therapies could cause more harm than good. "But many others can be treated with hopes of success", Morra assures. In particular, "all 'fit' elderly people, i.e. those
