New hormone therapy option for elderly breast cancer patients
Researchers have found older sufferers of the disease are more responsive to hormone therapy
Medication taken orally may work better on elderly breast cancer patients than chemotherapy, university researchers suggested as they encouraged people aged 65 and over to seek treatment.
The new approach proposes using hormone therapy to suppress tumour growth as it has fewer side effects than chemotherapy, according to a team from the University of Hong Kong's Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine.
The team wants to dispel the idea that "old age means frailty" and that elderly people should give up on treatment.
Elderly patients had the same opportunities to undergo treatment and recover as young patients, and did not need to resign themselves to their fate, they said.
"The older the age of presentation, the slower the tempo of the disease, with decreasing aggressiveness," HKU oncologist Dr Henry Sze Chun-kin said yesterday. "The elderly are more responsive to hormone therapy."
Fellow HKU oncologist Dr Janice Tsang Wing-hang also believed that for elderly patients without other life-threatening diseases, it was better to use hormone therapy first.
In 2011, breast cancer was the most prevalent cancer in local women, Cancer Registry data showed. And one in four breast cancer patients was at least 65.
The HKU team is suggesting the new treatment approach for patients with hormone-positive (HR+) breast cancer, in which tumour growth is stimulated by hormones.
This is the most common type of breast cancer among Hong Kong's elderly people, accounting for 77 per cent of cases.
Chemotherapy has always been adopted for HR+ breast cancer patients in the late stages, but the team says it can be delayed and used only if hormone therapy does not work.
Tsang said: "Doctors or family members may think elderly patients are not suitable for treatment as they have other diseases. As they do not have proper treatment, they record a higher mortality rate."
