A new retrospective review of 700 women aged 65 or older shows that taking adjuvant chemotherapy for lymph-node positive breast cancer is associated with a reduction in recurrence of and death from breast cancer.
Although the older women had a higher treatment-related mortality (33 deaths), the authors suggest that “older breast cancer patients … ask their physicians about the opportunities to receive chemotherapy that might be helpful to them.”
Older women derived the same benefit as younger women in this review, and they state that “age should not be a contraindication to the use of optimal chemotherapy regimens in older women who are in good general health.”
Perhaps this will help to dispel a bias often seen against older patients with breast cancer.
