Clinical management of older people with non-small cell lung cancer in England
- Paul Beckett1,
- Matthew Callister2,
- Laila J Tata3,
- Richard Harrison4,
- Michael D Peake5,
- Roz Stanley6,
- Ian Woolhouse7,
- Mark Slade8,
- Richard B Hubbard9
- 1Burton Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Burton-on-Trent, UK
- 2Department of Respiratory Medicine, Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, Leeds, UK
- 3Department of Epidemiology, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK
- 4Department of Respiratory Medicine, North Tees General Hospital, Stockton-on-Tees, UK
- 5Department of Respiratory Medicine, Glenfield Hospital, Leicester, UK
- 6The Information Centre for Health and Social Care, Leeds, UK
- 7Department of Respiratory Medicine, University Hospitals of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK
- 8Department of Respiratory Medicine, Papworth Hospital, Cambridge, UK
- 9Department of Respiratory Medicine, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK
- Correspondence to Dr Paul Beckett, Burton Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Queens Hospital Belvedere Road, Burton-on-Trent DE13 0RB, UK; emailpaulbeckett{at}gmail.com
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Contributors PB, RS, MDP and IW lead the team responsible for audit data. RH provided the initial idea for the analysis. PB analysed the data under the supervision of RBH and LJT. PB wrote the paper with substantial input from all authors on content, style and presentation.
- Received 4 September 2011
- Accepted 7 June 2012
- Published Online First 6 July 2012
Abstract
Data for 25261 patients with non-small cell lung cancer whose details were submitted to the National Lung Cancer Audit in England were analysed to assess the effect of age at diagnosis on their clinical management, after accounting for sex, stage, performance status and comorbidity. Multivariate logistic regression showed the odds of having histocytological confirmation and anticancer treatment decreased progressively with age, and was also lower in women. It is likely that these results have a multifactorial explanation, and further research into the attitudes of patients, carers and healthcare professionals, and clinical trials of treatment in older populations, are necessary.
Footnotes
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Funding The National Lung Cancer Audit in the UK is commissioned by the Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership (HQIP) with funds from the Department of Health and maintained jointly by the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) and the Royal College of Physicians.
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Competing interests None.
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Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
