Elderly gastrointestinal cancer patients and radiochemotherapy: a review

Gastrointestinal cancers are among the most frequently occurring cancer worldwide. Elderly patients represent a large proportion of patients diagnosed with gastrointestinal cancers. Despite this, elderly patients are generally under-represented in clinical trials, therefore a general consensus on how to treat elderly patients is still far from being achieved. In oesophageal cancer, radiochemotherapy can be administered successfully and effectively but should be administered with close monitoring because of potential toxicities especially hematological. In gastric and rectal cancer, there is no clear trade-off between efficacy and side effects and some patients may not gain a survival benefit from combined treatment. Instead, the treatment of elderly pancreatic cancer patients with a good performance status should be no different than the treatment of younger patients. Radiochemotherapy maintains its activity and feasibility in elderly gastrointestinal cancer patients. Finally, it is very important to assess co-morbidity with its severity in order to aid in the development of plans for treatment.