Physical Comorbidities and Their Relationship with Cancer Treatment and Its Outcomes in Older Adult Populations: Systematic Review

Background: Cancer is one of the predominant causes of morbidity and mortality in older adult populations worldwide. Among a range of barriers, comorbidity particularly poses a clinical challenge in cancer diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment owing to its heterogeneous nature. While accurate comorbidity assessments and appropriate treatment administration can result in better patient outcomes, evidence related to older adult cancer populations is limited as these individuals are often excluded from regular clinical trials due to age and comorbid conditions.

Objective: To determine the prevalence of physical comorbidity and the impact of physical comorbidities and rurality on treatment and its outcomes in older adult cancer populations.

Methods: Scientific databases Embase and PubMed were searched for published scientific literature on physical comorbidity and older adult cancer patients. Google Scholar was searched for scholarly literature published in nonindexed journals. Snowballing was utilized to identify research papers missed in the above searches. Included studies : (1) reported on original research involving cancer patients; (2) included patients aged 65 years or older; (3) had patients receiving cancer-related treatment and (4) cancer survivors; (5) reported on physical comorbidity as a variable; (6) were published in English; and (7) conducted from any geographical location.

Results: In total, 29 studies were selected for data extraction, evidence synthesis, and quality assessment. In these, comorbidities ranged from 37.9%-74.3% in colorectal cancer, 74%-81% in head and neck cancer, and 12.6%-49% in breast cancer. Moderate comorbidities ranged from 13%-72.9%, and severe comorbidities from 2.5%-68.2%. Comorbidity increased with age, with comorbidity affecting both treatment choice and process. Physical comorbidities significantly affected treatment initiation, causing delay, toxicity, and discontinuation. Older adult cancer patients were given less vigorous and nonstandard treatments and were also less likely to be offered treatment. Where patients are given more vigorous treatment, several studies showed better survival outcomes. Appropriate treatment in older adult cancer patients increased both overall and disease-related survival rates. None of the studies noted rurality as a distinct variable.

Conclusions: This systematic review concludes that there is evidence to substantiate the adverse effect of comorbidity on treatment and survival outcomes. However, the mechanism by which comorbidity impedes or impacts treatment is unknown in many cases. Some low-quality evidence is available for considering the functional status and biological age in treatment decisions. Future studies that substantiate the value of comprehensive older adult assessments before treatment initiation in cancer patients, including assessing the nature and severity of comorbidities, and additional consideration of rurality as a factor, could lessen the effect of comorbidities on the treatment process.