Geriatric Assessment in Oncology Practice

Comprehensive geriatric assessment in oncology.

The incidence of cancer increases with advanced age and the majority of cancer deaths are in patients aged ≥ 65. The geriatric population is a heterogeneous group and a patient's chronologic age does not always correlate with underlying physiologic status. Oncologists need to be able to obtain information on physiologic and functional capacity in older patients in order to provide safe and effe...

Geriatric Assessment and Community Practice

Comprehensive geriatric assessment and its clinical impact in oncology.

Comprehensive geriatric assessment (CGA) is a process that consists of a multidimensional data-search and a process of analyzing and linking patient characteristics creating an individualized intervention-plan, carried out by a multidisciplinary team. In general, the positive health care effects of CGA are established, but in oncology both CGA and the presence of geriatric syndromes still have ...

Risk Assessment in Oncology Clinical Practice

Myelosuppression and neutropenia represent the major dose-limiting toxicity of cancer chemotherapy. Chemotherapy-induced neutropenia may be accompanied by fever, presumably due to life-threatening infection, which generally requires hospitalization for evaluation and treatment with empiric broad-spectrum antibiotics. The resulting febrile neutropenia is a major cause of the morbidity, mortality...

Personalizing medicine in geriatric oncology.

Minimizing toxicity while maximizing efficacy is a common goal in the treatment of any condition but its importance is underscored in the discipline of oncology because of the serious nature of many chemotherapeutic toxicities and the risk of cancer recurrence or disease progression. The challenge of achieving an optimal therapeutic index is especially augmented in the elderly population becaus...