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News
Older cancer patients are underrepresented in clinical trials, meaning the treatments recommended to them may not actually fit their needs or priorities. A new EORTC perspective paper argues that integrating patient preferences — like quality of life vs. survival trade-offs — into trial design is essential. Without this shift, future cancer care could miss the mark for the majority of patients, who will be 65 and older.
Older adults make up a growing share of cancer patients, but they're significantly underrepresented in clinical trials — and a new perspective paper from the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) says that's a serious problem. Published in the European Journal of Cancer, the paper argues that trials designed without older adults in mind may produce treatment recommendations that simply don't work for them.
The core issue? Older patients often have different priorities than younger ones. Research suggests they tend to value health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and overall survival most — but these two goals can conflict. Longer survival might come at the cost of quality of life, and vice versa. The EORTC authors say clinical trials need to account for these trade-offs by actively incorporating patient preferences into study design, using tools like simple trade-off exercises or more sophisticated discrete-choice experiments.
Key Takeaways:
Why it matters: As the cancer patient population ages, trials that ignore older adults' preferences risk producing guidelines that don't reflect real-world patient values — potentially leading to treatments that are technically effective but practically unsuitable for the majority of future cancer patients.
