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Chemotherapy regimens for patients with advanced gastric cancer

Thursday, January 21, 2016

Holly G. Prigerson, Ph.D., professor of Sociology in Medicine, Irving Sherwood Wright Professor in Geriatrics, Joan and Sanford I. Weill Department of Medicine, director, Center for Research on End of Life Care, Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, spoke to OncLive about chemotherapy regimens for patients with advanced gastric cancer.

For metastatic, late-stage patients with a performance status between 1 and 2, it is questionable whether chemotherapy would be beneficial, in terms of quality of life, in the third-line setting, Prigerson explains. In a study, patients with a good performance status who were on chemotherapy were found to have a worse quality of death compared with those who did not receive chemotherapy (70%).  For those with a poor performance status, there was little harm or benefit, she adds.