Lung cancer in elderly patients

Abstract

There is a worldwide-accepted evidence of a population shift toward older ages. This shift favors an increased risk of developing lung cancer that is primarily a disease of older populations. Decision making is extremely difficult in elderly patients, since this group is under-represented in clinical trials with only 25% of them historically opening to patients older than 65 years. For all these reasons, a "customized" preoperative assessment to identify physiological or pathological frailty should be encouraged since standard tools may be less reliable. The work already done to improve patient selection for lung surgery in the elderly population clearly shows that surgical resection seems the treatment of choice for early stage lung cancer. Further studies are required to improve outcome by reducing postoperative morbidity and mortality.

Keywords: Lung cancer; elderly patients; lung resection.