The relevance of a geriatric assessment for elderly patients with a haematological malignancy--a systematic review.
BACKGROUND
Geriatric assessment is increasingly used to assess the health status of older cancer patients. We set out to assemble all available evidence on the relevance of a geriatric assessment in the treatment of older patients with haematological malignancies.


METHODS
A systematic Medline and Embase search for studies in which a geriatric assessment was used to detect health issues or to address the association between baseline geriatric assessment and outcome.


RESULTS
18 publications from 15 studies were included. The median age of patients was 73 years (range 58-86). Despite generally good performance status, the prevalence of geriatric impairments was high. Geriatric impairments were associated with a shorter overall survival in a relevant proportion of studies (instrumental activities 55%, nutritional status 67%, cognitive capacities 83%, objectively measured physical capacity 100%). Comorbidity, physical capacity and nutritional status retained their significance even in multivariate analyses in 50%, 75%, and 67% of analyses respectively, whereas age and performance status lost their predictive value in most studies. One study found an association between comorbidity and chemotherapy-related non-haematological toxicity. In another study a pronounced association between summarised outcome of geriatric assessment and chemotherapy-related toxicity as well as response to treatment was described.


CONCLUSIONS
This review demonstrates that a geriatric assessment can detect multiple health issues, even in patients with good performance status. Impairments in geriatric domains have predictive value for mortality and also appear to be associated with toxicity and other outcome measures and should thus be integrated in individualised treatment algorithms.
Department of Geriatric Medicine, Diakonessenhuis Utrecht, The Netherlands. Electronic address: mhamaker@diakhuis.nl.
M E
ME
Hamaker
Department of Geriatric Medicine, Diakonessenhuis Utrecht, The Netherlands.
M C
MC
Prins
Department of Oncology and Haematology, Innsbruck Medical University, Innsbruck, Austria.
R
R
Stauder
D000203:Activities of Daily Living; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000970:Antineoplastic Agents / Q000627:therapeutic use; D003071:Cognition; D016206:Databases, Bibliographic; D005260:Female; D015577:Geriatric Assessment / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D019337:Hematologic Neoplasms / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000188:drug therapy / Q000401:mortality / Q000503:physiopathology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009752:Nutritional Status; D011379:Prognosis; D016019:Survival Analysis
D000970:Antineoplastic Agents
Elderly; Geriatric assessment; Haematological malignancies; Prognostication