Some patients with imminently fatal cancer still receive treatment

Some patients who are newly diagnosed with metastatic cancer in the United States have received ineffective surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, and hormonal therapy according to a new American Cancer Society study. The authors say the findings highlight the need to identify patients with imminently fatal metastatic cancer who can not benefit from aggressive and expensive therapies. The study appears early online JNCI Cancer Spectrum.

Little known metastatic cancer patients who die soon after diagnosis. For the new study, by Helmneh Sineshaw, MD, MPH, and other researchers from the American Cancer Society, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (Boston, Mbad.), Baptist Cancer Center (Memphis, TN), and Mayo Clinic College of Medicine (Rochester, MN), reviewed treatment patterns for 100,848 adult patients in the National Cancer Database. All were newly-diagnosed with metastatic lung, colorectal, bad, or pancreatic cancer and died within one month of diagnosis.

They found wide variations in cancer treatment, overtime, age, insurance, and type of treatment facility. Surgery rates ranged from 0.4% of pancreatic cancer patients to 28.3% of colorectal cancer patients. Chemotherapy uses ranged from 5.8% of colorectal cancer patients to 11% of lung and bad cancer patients. Radiotherapy rates ranged from 1.3% in pancreatic cancer patients to 18.7% of lung cancer patients. Use of some treatment, for surgery for colorectal and bad cancer, declined over time. Lung cancer patients treated at community cancer centers had 48% of the population at the National Cancer Institute-designated cancer centers.

Those patients are more likely to be diagnosed with a fatal history of metastatic cancer, which may not be beneficial to aggressive prolonged life-prolonging and expensive therapies.