[Elderly patients and radiotherapy: A short review]

The ageing of French population imposes to radiotherapists the challenge to treat older patients and to adjust their treatment. Unthinkable 30 years ago, radiation therapy concerns nowadays patients aged more than 90 years old. Oncogeriatric scales have been improved those last years without necessarily making sure that the right treatment is given to the right patient: if oncogeriatric scales use influences the final therapeutic decision, it does not define new target volumes, new doses, or new fractionation protocols. Except for some organs, there is not, for the moment, any consensus concerning geriatric population adapted treatments. This makes any therapeutic decision difficult. The present review has for objective to realise a report of the studies about favorable and unfavorable effects of radiation therapy amongst aged (>70 years old) or very aged (>90years old) population.