Cancer after 70, everything you need to know

Only 10% of cancers affect people under 49 years oldwhile 39% concerns i 50-69 years old and the remaining 51% hits over seventy. Overall sand out of 10 cancer patients are over 65. In fact, aging is a determining factor in the development of cancer: with the passage of time, in fact, the effects of carcinogenic factors accumulate and the cellular repair capacity of the organism fails. Italy is the oldest country in Europe: 20% of the population is over 65, for a total of 12 million people.
Only half of the elderly patients receive it for the best cancer treatments because too often oncologists have hesitation in prescribing the most effective therapies to patients considered fragile only for their age, who instead in many cases are in excellent physical shape – underlines Cognetti -. Instead, we must calibrate the therapy on the individual patient, taking into account the “age factor”, with a precise objective: to establish the most adequate care, considering possible weaknesses (such as the presence of other pathologies), but also strengths, given that many elderly people are in good health.