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An item on the American Society of Clinical Oncology's list of “10 things patients and physicians should question” focuses on potentially overaggressive treatment of solid tumors: “Don't use cancer-directed therapy for solid tumor patients with … low performance status … no benefit from prior evidence-based interventions … and no strong evidence supporting the clinical value of further anti-cancer treatment.” Now, in a new study, attention shifts to end-of-life treatment in patients with hematologic malignancies.
Of 816 cancer patients treated at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center who died during a 6-month period, 113 had hematologic malignancies (leukemia, 43%; lymphoma, 32%; and myeloma, 25%). During the last month of life, patients with hematolo…