PMID: 8958740Oct 1, 1996Paper

Anemia in elderly patients with malignant tumors

Nihon Ronen Igakkai zasshi. Japanese journal of geriatrics
M KikuchiR Ueda

Abstract

Complications, prognosis, and efficacy of treatments were retrospectively studied in elderly patients, some of whom had lung, stomach, colon, pancreatic, and liver cancers. Hemoglobin concentration and characteristics of erythrocytes were measured for up to sixty months. Eighty-eight patients died of cancer, and malignant tumors were detected before death in 57. The average survival periods were 11 months for patients with gastric cancer. 9 months for those with colon cancer, and 7 months for those with lung cancer. Malignancies of the digestive organs and lung were often detected in elderly patients with anemia. In elderly people who were without cancer for more than 78 months the hemoglobin concentration did not change significantly, but in those with a malignancy the hemoglobin concentration continuously decreased. Patients with colon cancer who were given blood transfusions survived longer than those who were not given the transfusions, but the same was not true of patients with gastric or lung cancers. Iron therapy, however, was generally effective in patients with malignant tumors of the gastrointestinal tract. Among those who were near death, the red cell distribution widths differed significantly between patients with d...Continue Reading

Related Concepts

Related Feeds

Anemia

Anemia develops when your blood lacks enough healthy red blood cells. Anemia of inflammation (AI, also called anemia of chronic disease) is a common, typically normocytic, normochromic anemia that is caused by an underlying inflammatory disease. Here is the latest research on anemia.