Doctors may be steering older women away from certain breast cancer treatments due to “well-meaning but misplaced beliefs” about their preferences and fitness to undergo surgery, a study suggests.
Breast cancer is the most common cancer in the UK, with about 56,000 people diagnosed and 11,500 dying from it each year. Although survival rates have almost doubled over the past 40 years, the greatest gains have been in younger patients. Since the 1970s there has been a 44% reduction in 65- to 69-year-olds, a 50% reduction in 50- to 64-year-olds and a 57% reduction in patients aged 25 to 49, versus a 27% reduction in 70- to 79-year-olds and a 6% increase for those aged 80-plus.
