Slechtere prognose voor oudere borstkankerpatiënt

Conflict of interest: the study on which this article is based was enabled by a grant from the Dutch Cancer Society (2007-3968); the TEAM study was supported by an educational grant from Pfizer. Financial support for this article: none declared.

• The prognosis for older post-menopausal breast cancer patients is worse than for younger post-menopausal patients.

• This applies to the relatively healthy patients taking part in randomized clinical studies, but is also the case for older breast cancer patients in the general population.

• The worse prognosis may be explained by inadequate treatment, and possibly also by age-specific tumour and patient characteristics.

• As older patients are rarely included in randomized trials, it is still insufficiently clear what constitutes adequate treatment for them.

• It is therefore important to include more elderly patients in clinical studies into the effectiveness of breast cancer therapy.

• An important aim is to allow correct assessment of which patients will die with, and which patients will die from breast cancer, so that treatment can be adjusted accordingly.