• J. Cancer Res. Clin. Oncol. · Dec 2007

    Age, severe comorbidity and functional impairment independently contribute to poor survival in cancer patients.

    • Ulrich Wedding, Bernd Röhrig, Almuth Klippstein, Ludger Pientka, and Klaus Höffken.
    • Department for Internal Medicine II, Division of Haematology and Medical Oncology, Friedrich Schiller University, Erlanger Allee 101, 07747 Jena, Germany. ulrich.wedding@med.uni-jena.de
    • J. Cancer Res. Clin. Oncol. 2007 Dec 1; 133 (12): 945-50.

    PurposeWith the increasing number of elderly patients suffering from cancer, comorbidity and functional impairment become common problems in patients with cancer. Both comorbidity and functional impairment are associated with a shorter survival time in cancer patients, but their independent role has rarely been addressed before.MethodsWithin a prospective trial we recruited 427 cancer patients, irrespective of age and type of cancer, admitted as inpatients prior to the start of chemotherapy. Comorbidity was assessed with the cumulative illness rating scale (CIRS-G), functional impairment with WHO performance status (WHO-PS), basal (ADL) and instrumental (IADL) activities of daily living.ResultsMedian follow-up was 34.2 months. A total, 61.4%. of patients died. Median survival time was 21.0 months. Age, kind of tumour (solid vs. haematological), treatment approach (non-curative vs. curative), WHO-PS (2-4 vs. 0-1), IADL (<8 vs. 8), and severe comorbidity (CIRS-level 3-4 vs. none) were significantly associated with shorter survival time in univariate analysis. In a multivariate Cox-regression-analysis, age (HR 1.019; 95%-CI 1.007-1.032; P=0.003), kind of tumour (HR 1.832; 95%-CI 1.314-2.554; P<0.001), WHO-PS (HR 1.455; 95%-CI 1.059-2.000; P=0.021), and comorbidity level 3-4 (HR 1.424; 95%-CI 1.012-2.003; P=0.043) maintained their significant association.ConclusionsAge, severe comorbidity, functional impairment, and kind of tumour are independently related to shorter survival time in cancer patients.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…