Role of the vulnerable elders survey-13 screening tool in predicting treatment plan modification for older adults with cancer

Geriatric assessment in the management of older patients with cancer – A systematic review (update)

“…Overall, 29 studies addressed the comparison between the oncologic treatment plan before and after geriatric assessment, of which 21 described the change in treatment plan for individual patients [8,9,13,14,16,21,29,33,35,[39][40][41][42]48,52,53,59,60,66,72] and eight described differences in treatment choice between cohorts that did or did not undergo a geriatric assessment [10,20,23,26,46,55,57,63]. Three studies discussed the effect on communication and care planning [12,20,23].…”

“…Twenty-one studies described changes in the oncologic treatment for individual patients as a result of the geriatric assessment [8,9,13,14,16,21,29,33,35,[39][40][41][42]48,52,53,59,60,66,72]. The median proportion of patients in which the treatment plan changed was 31% (range 6-56%), primarily in favour of a less intensive treatment option (median 73% of changes, Appendix 2a).…”

“…For the eleven studies using a geriatric consultation [8,9,14,21,29,33,41,42,52,66,68], the median percentage of patients with treatment adjustments was 22% (range 7-49%); for studies using an assessment by the oncology team (n = 8) [13,16,35,39,40,48,59,72], it was 28% (6-45%). In the two studies using a multidisciplinary team evaluation [53,60], 54% and 56% of treatment choices were altered by the geriatric assessment (p-value for pooled data <0.001, Appendix 2b).…”

Exercise interventions for frail older adults with cancer

“…Validated tools to measure frailty include the Fried Frailty Index [4], the Clinical Frail Scale [2], and the Cardiovascular Health Study-Frailty Phenotype [5]. In the oncology setting, the G8 [6,7] and Vulnerable Elders Survey-13 [8][9][10] are also commonly used and have demonstrated good screening capacity for frailty among older adults with cancer [11][12][13]. In this study, we present a discussion on the state of the science of exercise interventions for frail older adults with cancer.…”