ABSTRACT
Men and women over age 75 are different from men and women in their 50s. A recurring theme of geriatrics is that one cannot make rules generated from the study of the medical treatment of 50-year-olds and unquestioningly apply them to the medical treatment of 80year-olds. Yet, most of the ‘rules’ of oncology and the rest of internal medicine are generated from studies of those under the age of 65.1 There are no compelling a priori reasons to think that these rules will work very well in older patients. A corollary of this statement is the fact that older cancer patients are treated differently from younger cancer patients does not prove that older patients are being treated incorrectly.
