Ovarian Ca patients over age 75 often bypassed for Chemo. (Five Times Less Likely to Receive it).

ATLANTA -- Elderly women with advanced ovarian cancer may be less likely than younger women to receive adjuvant chemotherapy Rosemary Cress, Dr.P.H., said at a conference on cancer sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Despite a 1994 National Cancer Institute consensus statement that all ovarian cancer patients with stage IC disease and higher should receive adjuvant chemotherapy, data also suggest that many younger women with stage IC or II disease aren't receiving it, said Dr. Cress, an epidemiologist with the California Cancer Registry Public Health Institute, Sacramento.

Among 2,150 women in the registry who were diagnosed with primary epithelial ovarian cancer during 1994-1996, 36% were age 54 and younger, 40% were aged 55-74, and 24% were 75 years and older, she said at the meeting, also sponsored by the Department of Health and Human Services, the American Cancer Society, and the NCI.

At diagnosis, 20% were stage IA/B, 9% IC, 10.5% II, 34% III, and 21% IV (5.5% were unknown). Stage IV tumors were diagnosed in 35% of women aged 75 and older versus 17% of women younger than 75.

Adjuvant chemotherapy was given to 86% of women under age 75 with stage ...