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New surgical options for elderly lung cancer patients
M T Jaklitsch1, R Bueno, S J Swanson
1Division of Thoracic Surgery, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA. mtjaklitsc@bics.bwh.harvard.edu
Abstract:
To understand the size of the aging population in the United States, the imminent need to include the elderly in clinical studies on lung cancer, and the safe potential of video-assisted thoracic surgery, and to change awareness of the elderly's need for and ability to undergo treatment for lung cancer, clinical studies of video-assisted thoracic surgery in patients > or = 70 years of age are presented. The elderly are a fast-growing part of the American population who are at high risk for lung cancer and should be included in clinical studies. Age alone should not be a contradiction to thoracic surgical interventions when video thoracoscopy is performed as treatment.