The antineoplastic treatment in the elderly

More than 550,000 American people died for cancer only in 1998 and more than third of them were over 65 years of age. According to recent data in next decade more than 70% of all the deaths for tumour will be verified in the population over 65 years. The cancers mostly frequently associated with the deaths in the elderly population are the tumour of the lung, colon, prostate and breast. Therefore the geriatrics oncology is progressively assuming a central and essential role within the medical oncology. One of the aspects of great interest in the treatment of the cancers of the elderly patient (> 65 years) is the study about some pharmacokinetic modifications of the antitumour medicines in such band of age, and the study about some pattern of toxicity characteristics in the elderly patients. In this ambit there are a few studies in literature devoted specifically to such aspect. This study represents an attempt of revision of the literature finalized to analyse the toxicological and pharmacokinetic characteristics of the principal chemotherapeutic agents used in the therapy of elderly patients affected with cancer. In the last part of the review we have tried to synthesize the state of the art of the achieved results about the medicines that have shown a better therapeutic index and a better impact on the clinical benefit in such population of patients.