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Management and survival analysis of elderly patients with a cancer in the digestive system who refused to receive anticancer treatments

Treatment and management of cancers in elderly patients require some special considerations. A better understanding of how cancers progress in those elderly patients who have not received any anticancer treatments could better help us in treating these patients and in making end-of-life decisions. O...

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Autores principales: Wan, Jun, Xu, Shiping, Wu, Yinqiao, Wu, Benyan, Liao, Dezhong Joshua, Xu, Ningzhi, Wang, Gangshi
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer Berlin Heidelberg 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5982435/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29417291
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00520-018-4065-9
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author Wan, Jun
Xu, Shiping
Wu, Yinqiao
Wu, Benyan
Liao, Dezhong Joshua
Xu, Ningzhi
Wang, Gangshi
author_facet Wan, Jun
Xu, Shiping
Wu, Yinqiao
Wu, Benyan
Liao, Dezhong Joshua
Xu, Ningzhi
Wang, Gangshi
author_sort Wan, Jun
collection PubMed
description Treatment and management of cancers in elderly patients require some special considerations. A better understanding of how cancers progress in those elderly patients who have not received any anticancer treatments could better help us in treating these patients and in making end-of-life decisions. Over the past years, we had encountered 57 elderly patients, aged 75 to 94 years (87.6 on average), with a cancer in the digestive system, who refused to accept anticancer treatment but who did receive the best available supportive and palliative care. Clinicopathological data of these patients were analyzed. Of these 57 cases, 49 were at an advanced or late stage, while the remaining eight were at an early stage at the time of diagnosis. The median overall survival time of all the patients was 11 months, and almost the entire cohort manifested multiple-organ impairments. The average number of malfunctioning organs per patient was 3.68. After carefully predicting, and then preventing or managing complications, only 54.4% of the patients eventually died of multiple-organ functional failure. Nearly 18% of the single organ dysfunctions were finally well-controlled. Our data provide the first statistical information on the survival time and the direct cause of death of the elderly patients with a cancer in the digestive system not treated with chemotherapy or other direct anticancer interventions, but who did receive the best available supportive and palliative cares. During their struggle with cancer, elderly patients clearly could benefit from prophylactic interventions on organ dysfunction.
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spelling pubmed-59824352018-06-11 Management and survival analysis of elderly patients with a cancer in the digestive system who refused to receive anticancer treatments Wan, Jun Xu, Shiping Wu, Yinqiao Wu, Benyan Liao, Dezhong Joshua Xu, Ningzhi Wang, Gangshi Support Care Cancer Original Article Treatment and management of cancers in elderly patients require some special considerations. A better understanding of how cancers progress in those elderly patients who have not received any anticancer treatments could better help us in treating these patients and in making end-of-life decisions. Over the past years, we had encountered 57 elderly patients, aged 75 to 94 years (87.6 on average), with a cancer in the digestive system, who refused to accept anticancer treatment but who did receive the best available supportive and palliative care. Clinicopathological data of these patients were analyzed. Of these 57 cases, 49 were at an advanced or late stage, while the remaining eight were at an early stage at the time of diagnosis. The median overall survival time of all the patients was 11 months, and almost the entire cohort manifested multiple-organ impairments. The average number of malfunctioning organs per patient was 3.68. After carefully predicting, and then preventing or managing complications, only 54.4% of the patients eventually died of multiple-organ functional failure. Nearly 18% of the single organ dysfunctions were finally well-controlled. Our data provide the first statistical information on the survival time and the direct cause of death of the elderly patients with a cancer in the digestive system not treated with chemotherapy or other direct anticancer interventions, but who did receive the best available supportive and palliative cares. During their struggle with cancer, elderly patients clearly could benefit from prophylactic interventions on organ dysfunction. Springer Berlin Heidelberg 2018-02-07 2018 /pmc/articles/PMC5982435/ /pubmed/29417291 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00520-018-4065-9 Text en © The Author(s) 2018 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
spellingShingle Original Article
Wan, Jun
Xu, Shiping
Wu, Yinqiao
Wu, Benyan
Liao, Dezhong Joshua
Xu, Ningzhi
Wang, Gangshi
Management and survival analysis of elderly patients with a cancer in the digestive system who refused to receive anticancer treatments
title Management and survival analysis of elderly patients with a cancer in the digestive system who refused to receive anticancer treatments
title_full Management and survival analysis of elderly patients with a cancer in the digestive system who refused to receive anticancer treatments
title_fullStr Management and survival analysis of elderly patients with a cancer in the digestive system who refused to receive anticancer treatments
title_full_unstemmed Management and survival analysis of elderly patients with a cancer in the digestive system who refused to receive anticancer treatments
title_short Management and survival analysis of elderly patients with a cancer in the digestive system who refused to receive anticancer treatments
title_sort management and survival analysis of elderly patients with a cancer in the digestive system who refused to receive anticancer treatments
topic Original Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5982435/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29417291
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00520-018-4065-9
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