5- and 10-year survival in cancer patients aged 90 and older: a study of 37,318 patients from SEER.

Background And Objectives: Uncertainty exists about the value of cancer therapy in patients aged 90 years and older. Because of the relative paucity of these patients, as well as the possibility of selection bias in any one institution, the use of a large, total population-based cancer registry was employed.

Methods: The Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) program of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) offers a large, total population-based cancer registry. It includes more than 2,000,000 cases in the nine registry data from 1973 to 1998; 37,318 of these are 90 or older and are eligible for follow-up studies. A cross-sectional study of relative survival of all these cases, along with younger age groups for comparison, was carried out.

Results: After the first year after diagnosis, the annual relative survival is not affected by a patient's age for up to 10 years.

Conclusions: Age alone is not a contraindication to cancer treatment in the most elderly and, other than in the first year, one can expect the same relative survival in these oldest patients as one does for younger patients.