Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
To the Editors:
With great interests, we read the article by Prof. Costa et al. (2017), which concluded that lung cancer patients ≥70 years of age were often undertreated in Brazil.
Prof. Costa et al. separate the population with lung cancer in Brazil into two groups (aged <70 and aged ≥70). It is well known that patients with comorbidities usually have higher performance status (PS), and patients with different PS may get different clinical curative efficacy from the same therapy (Singh et al. 2017). However, in the study by Costa and colleagues (Costa et al. 2017), both performance status and comorbidities are not described in detail and seem to be ignored. It is quite possible that patients with higher levels of performance status or more comorbidities may not be given chemotherapy and other treatment modalities. These potential influencing factors may need to be incorporated in multivariate analysis.
References
Costa GJ, de Mello MJG, Ferreira CG et al (2017) Undertreatment trend in elderly lung cancer patients in Brazil. J Cancer Res Clin Oncol 143(8):1469–1475
Singh PS, Aggarwal AN, Behera D et al (2017) Simplified graded baseline symptom assessment in patients with lung cancer undergoing first-line chemotherapy: correlations and prognostic role in a resource-constrained setting. J Glob Oncol 3(1):54–63
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest regarding the present article.
Ethical approval
This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.
Informed consent
For this type of article, informed consent is not required.
Funding
The article was funded by Projects of medical and health technology development program in Zhejiang province (2016KYB008) and Projects of medical and health technology development program in Zhejiang province (2014KYA012).
Additional information
An author’s reply to this comment is available at doi:10.1007/s00432-017-2511-6.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Tang, Jl., Hou, Cj. Commentary on: undertreatment trend in elderly lung cancer patients in Brazil. J Cancer Res Clin Oncol 143, 2143 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00432-017-2498-z
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00432-017-2498-z