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Living With a Cancer Diagnosis as an Older Adult
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September 23, 2019
According to the National Cancer Institute, age is the greatest risk factor for developing cancer. In fact, 60 percent of people who have cancer are 65 or older. So are 60 percent of cancer survivors.
If you are an older adult with cancer, you should know that age is just one factor in your cancer and treatment. The best treatment plan depends on your general health, lifestyle, wishes and other factors. How to live with a cancer diagnosis as an older adult? This will be the topic of a presentation Dr. Rawad Elias, a geriatric oncologist at Hartford HealthCare Cancer Institute, on Sept. 27 at Duncaster in Bloomfield. The talk, “Cancer in Older Adults: Treating the Patient, Not the Disease,” is free and open to the public. It will focus on methods to assess older adults going through cancer treatments and interventions that can support them through their journey.
“Aging is associated with various conditions that can significantly impact patients’ cancer treatment tolerability and overall prognosis,” said Dr. Elias. “However, older adults, especially those with aging-related conditions, are underrepresented in clinical trials and therefore often treated in daily practice based on data derived from a younger or fitter patient population. Consequently, older patients are often either over-or under-treated due to limited evidence that guides the management of cancer and its treatments in this patient population.”
“A comprehensive geriatric assessment (CGA) identifies vulnerabilities in older patients that are not detected by routine examination, predicts potential treatment-related complications, estimates survival, and facilitates treatment decisions in older adults with cancer. Impairments identified by the assessment can guide implementation of supportive care interventions with the goal of improving outcomes in older adults with cancer.”
Dr. Elias, who completed his training in geriatrics and hematology-oncology at Boston University Medical Center, joined Hartford HealthCare Cancer Institute in June 2018. He has been working on building a cancer and aging program focused on supporting older adults with cancer.
Dr. Rawad Elias is a geriatric oncologist at Hartford HealthCare Cancer Institute.