Curative approaches to lung cancer in the elderly

Lung cancer is a common disease in elderly patients, and the increase in the size of the elderly population will lead to an increased proportion of elderly among lung cancer patients in the future. The prognosis of lung cancer is still poor, but curative approaches are feasible for patients with local stage NSCLC and for some patients with limited disease (LD) SCLC. The evidence for these curatively-intended approaches is derived from studies that are usually performed with highly selected patients. Elderly patients are underrepresented, and in daily clinical practice elderly patients are less likely to be treated with full standard approaches. We used the data from studies that focused particularly on the elderly, or provided subgroup information on age, to analyze the feasibility of applying current standard approaches to the elderly. We also discuss alternative approaches. Age alone is a very uncertain prognostic criterion for outcome or tolerability of treatment. It is much more important to obtain a comprehensive geriatric assessment of each individual patient. When adequate patient selection is provided, standard treatment approaches appear to be feasible for elderly (>70 years) patients with good performance status.