Dr. Susan Love Research Foundation | Breast Cancer

As with young women, women over 70 diagnosed with breast cancer face unique concerns.

There are studies that show that older women aren't treated as aggressively. There's also a tendency to restrict the options for treatment. For example, many doctors think that women who are older won't want chemotherapy. Surgeons also have a tendency to do mastectomies on older women without offering them breast conservation treatments, assuming that elderly women don't care as much about their looks. Some doctors also assume that six weeks of radiation will be too difficult for an older woman to handle. But radiation really isn't that hard (as long as the patient doesn't live a great distance from a radiation facility) and it may be that having a lumpectomy followed by radiation is what an older woman prefers.

Not only do surgeons neglect to mention the lumpectomy and radiation option, they also may not discuss reconstruction, again assuming that an older woman doesn't care about her looks. This is another assumption that is totally off base.

Most studies have not enrolled women over 70. That means we have little information on the best way to treat this population. Part of the problem in studying women over 70 is that we really can't evaluate long-term survival, since elderly people die from many illnesses. Also, many older women have other health problems that can make cancer treatments harder to tolerate.

The bottom line: Not all 70-, 80-, or 90-year-old women are the same. Treatment decisions must take into account how frail a person is, how active she is, her other health problems, and her individual treatment preferences.