Nina Rosa Neuendorff, Senior Physician in Geriatric Medicine at Marien Hospital Herne – University Hospital of Ruhr University Bochum, shared on LinkedIn:
“The evidence to perform a Comprehensive GeriatricAssessment (CGA) in Older Adults With Cancer prior to systemic cancer therapy is strong.
Why? Because the geriatric assessment diagnoses resilience and vulnerability, followed by geriatric interventions to support resilience and compensate for vulnerability like malnutrition, impaired mobility, cognitive decline, or social frailty.
The German S3 Guideline on CGA recommends CGA prior to treatment in all older adults >=70 years but you will rarely find a cancer center in Germany which offers this (and also few centers worldwide) although we know that we can decrease the rate of grade 3-5 toxicities thereby.
Would you omit appropriate #antiemetics today because they don’t change overall survival but make patients feel? Hopefully not.
Start thinking today whether you can implement CGA in your care. We all know that it requires ressources, time, and education. But the results are worth.
I thank my colleagues in Herne at St. Elisabeth Gruppe – Katholische Kliniken Rhein-Ruhr, Christian Baues, Dennis Akuamoa-Boateng, MD, Executive MBA mult., Dr. med. Florian Roghmann, Gero Lueg, Merlin Deterding, Amin Turki and Ulm, Michael D Denkinger, Filippo Maria Verri, Rea Mayland and Sabine Heublein.
We still learn a lot together but the journey is the destination!
Take a look at our experience!”
Title: Integration of geriatric assessment-guided care plan modifications and interventions into clinical paths of older adults with cancer (GORILLA): a feasibility approach
Authors: Rea Sujin Mayland, Merlin Deterding, Filippo Maria Verri, Sabine Heublein, Alma Aslan, Chantal Flemm, Julia Achilles, Amin T. Turki, Florian Roghmann, Dennis Akuamoa-Boateng, Pia Halagiera, Christian Baues, Sarah Flossdorf, Nuowei Wang, Dirk Strumberg, Gero Lueg, Rainer Wirth, Michael Denkinger, Nina Rosa Neuendorff
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