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Most Cancer Treatments Near End of Life Are Useless: Study

Medically reviewed by Carmen Pope, BPharm. Last updated on May 17, 2024.

By Dennis Thompson HealthDay Reporter

FRIDAY, May 17, 2024 -- Cutting-edge cancer treatments are essentially useless for patients barely clinging to life, a new study shows.

Chemotherapies, immunotherapies, targeted therapies and hormone therapies do not improve survival rates in patients with very advanced tumors near the end of life, according to findings published May 16 in the journal JAMA Oncology.

“Since we don’t see an improved survival benefit, oncologists should revisit their goals of care conversations with patients, and this information in the study should be explained to patients,” said lead researcher Maureen Canavan, an associate research scientist with Yale Cancer Center.

For the study, researchers analyzed records on more than 78,000 adult cancer patients treated at 280 U.S. cancer clinics between 2015 and 2019.

The team specifically looked at patients in the final stages of six common cancers -- breast, colon, lung, pancreas, kidney and bladder.

“We wanted to find out if oncologic treatment of very advanced tumors is associated with improved survival or if there are times when it’s futile to continue care and instead oncologists should shift focus to palliative and supportive care,” Canavan said in a Yale news release.

The results showed no statistically significant survival benefit for patients treated with systemic therapies, compared to those who didn’t receive such treatments, researchers said.

Further, this was found across all the cancer types studied.

This information builds on a 2022 study, also published in the journal JAMA Oncology, which found there has been a gradual decline in chemotherapy use at the end of a patient’s life.

But at the same time, there’s been a corresponding uptick in the use of newer immunotherapy treatments, that earlier study reported.

That means that the use of systemic therapies overall has held steady, with about 17% of near-death patients receiving what now appears to be useless treatment, researchers said.

Doctors could best help patients by better judging when additional therapy will be futile and communicate that through a discussion of goals of care near the end of life, researchers concluded.

“We hope this information can help inform oncologists when they are deciding whether or not to continue treatment or transition patients who have metastatic disease to supportive care,” Canavan said.

Sources

  • Yale Cancer Center, news release, May 16, 2024

Disclaimer: Statistical data in medical articles provide general trends and do not pertain to individuals. Individual factors can vary greatly. Always seek personalized medical advice for individual healthcare decisions.

© 2024 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

Posted May 2024

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