Administering more treatments to advanced, end-of-life cancer patients did not increase their length of survival, according to a joint study from researchers at Yale Cancer Center in New Haven, Conn., and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
Both the American Society of Clinical Oncology and the National Quality Forum have previously recommended a cancer quality metric aimed at reducing these therapies at the end of life, according to the study, which was published May 16 in JAMA Oncology.
Researchers evaluated the health records of 78,446 adult cancer patients who were diagnosed with metastatic and advanced tumors of either breast, colorectal, non-small cell lung, pancreas, kidney, and urothelial cancers. The patient records came from 280 cancer centers across the U.S. between 2015 and 2019.
The evaluation revealed no statistically significant differences in administering the therapies toward end of life, or not. Study author Maureen Canavan, PhD, an epidemiologist at the Yale Cancer Outcomes, Public Policy, and Effectiveness Research Center, recounted that the question they aimed to answer with the research: "If there are times when it's futile to continue care and instead oncologists should shift focus to palliative and supportive care?" points to yes, but that these conversations should be had with the patient.
"Since we don't see an improved survival benefit, oncologists should revisit their goals of care conversations with patients, and this information in the study should be explained to patients," Dr. Canavan said in the release. "We hope this information can help inform oncologists when they are deciding whether or not to continue treatment or transition patients who have metastatic disease to supportive care."