Older Adult Priorities Should Shape Breast Cancer Trial Design: Enrique Soto Perez de Celis, MD, PhD

Captions are auto-generated.

The duration of treatment for patients with breast cancer can last for years, even decades, and as they continue to age, their values may shift their treatment decisions or perspectives.

“Designing clinical trials assessing treatments for older adults with breast cancer is important as it extends shared decision-making into clinical trials that will inform future treatments,” Enrique Soto Perez de Celis, MD, PhD, associate professor of medicine and medical oncology at the University of Colorado Anschutz, said in an interview with The American Journal of Managed Care^®.

“Sometimes what doctors chase and what doctors want to achieve does not match what's important for patients, and that is sometimes fueled by how we design our trials,” he said. “I think that every time we choose a new treatment, every time we're making any decision about modifications, we have to take into account what our patients value and use that as our North Star to decide what treatments to choose.”

Soto was also a panelist at the Denver Regional Institute for Value-Based Medicine on July 16, discussing how newer therapies are implemented into clinical practice and how treatment plans are adapted to suit patients’ needs—with an emphasis on geriatric patients.

In addition to considering older adults’ values when designing clinical trials, it’s also important to ensure they are represented in said trials, Soto emphasized. Researchers and clinicians should address trial eligibility requirements and geriatric measures and include sub-cohort studies focused on older patients and their desired outcomes, he said.

“We have to change our mindset in order to include outcomes that matter to older adults, outcomes such as independence, such as being able to live alone, doing their daily activities, and moving beyond these other outcomes that work for getting drug approvals but do not necessarily translate into a better life for patients,” Soto explained.