Cancer in the elderly: is it preventable?

It is the goal of the American Cancer Society to decrease the mortality from cancer by 50% and the incidence of cancer by 25% by the year 2015 in the United States. Achieving this goal requires intervention at the primary (incidence) and secondary (mortality) prevention stages, and will involve a concerted effort of the individual practitioner, governmental agencies, local, state, and national interest groups, and the population at large. Primary care practitioners must increase their level of enthusiasm for cancer prevention, and actively counsel patients about cancer risks and preventive measures. Practitioners should encourage inclined patients by providing support and specialty resources, such as dieticians, exercise therapists, and smoking and alcohol cessation programs. The greatest effort lies in the general population, who must adopt a healthier lifestyle, including appropriate diet, smoking cessation, control of obesity, and daily exercise. None of these lifestyle changes are easy to embrace, but once educated about lifestyle and risk of cancer, people have a powerful incentive to change. Continued public awareness campaigns and encouragement from health care providers are essential for the success of such programs. The success in smoking cessation shows that achieving societal lifestyle changes on a large scale is possible. The elderly are especially prone to benefit from primary and secondary prevention techniques, and it must not be assumed that only the young will realize the benefits of prevention and screening. The association of age and cancer risk will always be present, but need not be as consequential as it is now. Although cancer prevention may have a limited role in antiaging per se, the feasibility of cancer risk reduction has a definite role in aging successfully.