Health and Quality of Life Outcomes BioMed Central Review Open Access Quality of Life in elderly patients with cancer Massimo Di Maio and Francesco Perrone* Address: Clinical Trials Unit, National Cancer Institute, 80131 Naples, Italy Email: Massimo Di Maio - dimaiomax@; Francesco Perrone* - * Corresponding author Published: 17 September 2003 Health and Quality of Life Outcomes 2003, 1:44 This article is available from: Received: 31 July 2003 Accepted: 17 September 2003 © 2003 Di Maio and Perrone; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article: verbatim copying and redistribution of this article are permitted in all media for any purpose, provided this notice is. | BioMed Central Health and Quality of Life Outcomes Review Quality of Life in elderly patients with cancer Massimo Di Maio and Francesco Perrone Address Clinical Trials Unit National Cancer Institute 80131 Naples Italy Email Massimo Di Maio - dimaiomax@ Francesco Perrone - Corresponding author Open Access Published 17 September 2003 Received 31 July 2003 Accepted 17 September 2003 Health and Quality of Life Outcomes 2003 1 44 This article is available from http content 1 1 44 2003 Di Maio and Perrone licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article verbatim copying and redistribution of this article are permitted in all media for any purpose provided this notice is preserved along with the article s original URL. Abstract The incidence of most types of cancers is age-dependent and the progressive ageing is rapidly increasing the number of elderly people who need treatment for cancer. Elderly patients present peculiar characteristics that make the choice of the correct treatment more difficult and these patients are often undertreated. Moreover elderly patients are largely underrepresented in cancer treatment trials and this makes the experimental evidence on this topic even weaker. Health-related Quality of Life QOL has been considered as one of the hard end-points for clinical cancer research and treatment of elderly cancer patients represents a typical situation where its assessment can be particularly useful because the expected toxicity of treatment could be relevant in the discussion of the treatment choice. However QOL assessment in the elderly is complicated by several unresolved methodological problems higher frequency of illiteracy worse compliance with the questionnaires concomitant diseases use of instruments not validated in the aged population . Conduct of clinical trials dedicated to elderly patients is now encouraged but there are few published studies. Advanced non-small-cell lung cancer is one of
