Abstract

Radiotherapy (RT) is an effective and well tolerated treatment of elderly cancer patients both for curative and palliative purposes. Treatment desicion making for the elderly is often challenging considering the heterogeneity caused by comorbidity and lack of high-level evidence based guidelines for elderly cancer patients. Prognostic tools for expected survival, geriatric assessment, assessment of the functional reserve, analysis of the impact of comorbidity on radiotherapy and treatment toxicity and evidence based guidelines help oncologists to make optimal treatment decisions for the elderly and to modify treatment if needed.

Chronological age could not be the reason for suboptimal radiotherapy or for not offering RT to the elderly if indicated. The decision to use RT should be made by a multidisciplinary team in presence of patients presence in order to agree on different treatment modalities and their optimal timing. While providing RT effective supportive care should be guaranteed to cope with treatment toxicity and to maintain the optimal functional status of an elderly patient. Further research and clinical trials are needed to investigate the efficacy and side-effects of RT for elderly patients.