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Introduction: When risk estimation in older patients with hormone receptor positive breast cancer (HR + BC) is based on the same factors as in younger patients, age-related factors regarding recurrence risk and other-cause mortality are not considered. Genomic risk assessment could help identify patients with ultralow risk BC who can forgo adjuvant treatment. However, assessment tools should be validated specifically for older patients. This study aims to determine whether the 70-gene signature test (MammaPrint) can identify patients with HR + BC aged ≥70 years with ultralow risk for distant recurrence.Materials and Methods: Inclusion criteria: ≥70 years; invasive HR + BC; T1-2N0-3M0. Exclusion criteria: HER2 + BC; neoadjuvant therapy. MammaPrint assays were performed following standardized protocols. Clinical risk was determined with St. Gallen risk classification.Primary endpoint was 10-year cumulative incidence rate of distant recurrence in relation to genomic risk. Subdistribution hazard ratios (sHR) were estimated from Fine and Gray analyses. Multivariate analyses were adjusted for adjuvant endocrine therapy and clinical risk.Results: This study included 418 patients, median age 78 years (interquartile range [IQR] 73–83). Sixty percent of patients were treated with endocrine therapy. MammaPrint classified 50 patients as MammaPrint-ultralow, 224 patients as MammaPrint-low, and 144 patients as MammaPrint-high risk. Regarding clinical risk, 50 patients were classified low, 237 intermediate, and 131 high. Discordance was observed between clinical and genomic risk in 14 MammaPrint-ultralow risk patients who were high clinical risk, and 84 patients who were MammaPrint-high risk, but low or intermediate clinical risk. Median follow-up was 9.2 years (IQR 7.9–10.5).The 10-year distant recurrence rate was 17% (95% confidence interval [CI] 11–23) in MammaPrint-high risk patients, 8% (4–12) in MammaPrint-low (HR 0.46; 95%CI 0.25–0.84), and 2% (0–6) in MammaPrint-ultralow risk patients (HR 0.11; 95%CI 0.02–0.81). After adjustment for clinical risk and endocrine therapy, MammaPrint-high risk patients still had significantly higher 10-year distant recurrence rate than MammaPrint-low (sHR 0.49; 95%CI 0.26–0.90) and MammaPrint-ultralow patients (sHR 0.12; 95%CI 0.02–0.85). Of the 14 MammaPrint-ultralow, high clinical risk patients none developed a distant recurrence.Discussion: These data add to the evidence validating MammaPrint's ultralow risk threshold. Even in high clinical risk patients, MammaPrint-ultralow risk patients remained recurrence-free ten years after diagnosis. These findings justify future studies into using MammaPrint to individualize adjuvant treatment in older patients.

Background: For clinical decision making it is important to identify patients at risk for adverse outcomes after co-lorectal cancer (CRC) surgery, especially in the older population. Because the American College of Surgeons Na-tional Surgical Quality Improvement Program (ACS NSQIP) surgical risk calculator is potentially useful in clinical practice, we performed an external validation in a Dutch multicenter cohort of patients >= 70 years undergoing elective non-metastatic CRC surgery.Methods: We compared the ACS NSQIP calculator mean predicted risk to the overall observed rate of anastomotic leakage, return to operation room, pneumonia, discharge not to home, and readmission in our cohort using a one-sample Z-test. Calibration plots and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were used to determine the calculator's performance.Results: Six hundred eighty-two patients were included. Median age was 76.2 years. The ACS NSQIP calculator ac-curately predicted the overall readmission rate (predicted: 8.6% vs. observed: 7.8%, p = 0.456), overestimated the rate of discharge not to home (predicted:11.2% vs. observed: 7.0% p = 0.005) and underestimated the observed rate of all other outcomes. The calibration plots showed poor calibration for all outcomes. The ROC-curve showed an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.75 (95% confidence interval [CI] 0.67-0.83) for pneumonia and 0.70 (0.62-0.78) for discharge not to home. The AUC for all other outcomes was poor.Conclusions: The ACS NSQIP surgical risk calculator had a poor individual risk prediction (calibration) for all out-comes and only a fair discriminative ability (discrimination) to predict pneumonia and discharge not to home. The calculator might be considered to identify patients at high risk of pneumonia and discharge not to home to initiate additional preoperative interventions. (c) 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Background Current prediction tools for breast cancer outcomes are not tailored to the older patient, in whom competing risk strongly influences treatment effects. We aimed to develop and validate a prediction tool for 5-year recurrence, overall mortality, and other-cause mortality for older patients (aged >= 65 years) with early invasive breast cancer and to estimate individualised expected benefits of adjuvant systemic treatment.Methods We selected surgically treated patients with early invasive breast cancer (stage I-III) aged 65 years or older from the population-based FOCUS cohort in the Netherlands. We developed prediction models for 5-year recurrence, overall mortality, and other-cause mortality using cause-specific Cox proportional hazard models. External validation was performed in a Dutch Cancer registry cohort. Performance was evaluated with discrimination accuracy and calibration plots.Findings We included 2744 female patients in the development cohort and 13631 female patients in the validation cohort. Median age was 74.8 years (range 65-98) in the development cohort and 76.0 years (70-101) in the validation cohort. 5-year follow-up was complete for more than 99% of all patients. We observed 343 and 1462 recurrences, and 831 and 3594 deaths, of which 586 and 2565 were without recurrence, in the development and validation cohort, respectively. The area under the receiver-operating-characteristic curve at 5 years in the external dataset was 0.76 (95% CI 0.75-0.76) for overall mortality, 0.76 (0.76-0.77) for recurrence, and 0.75 (0.74-0.75) for other-cause mortality.Interpretation The PORTRET tool can accurately predict 5-year recurrence, overall mortality, and other-cause mortality in older patients with breast cancer. The tool can support shared decision making, especially since it provides individualised estimated benefits of adjuvant treatment. Copyright (C) 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Background: In the randomized Asian REGATTA trial, no survival benefit was shown for additional gastrectomy over chemotherapy alone in patients with advanced gastric cancer with a single incurable factor, thereby discouraging surgery for these patients. The purpose of this study was to evaluate treatment strategies for patients with metastatic gastric cancer in daily practice in five European countries, along with relative survival in each country. Methods: Nationwide population‐based data from Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden were combined. Patients with primary metastatic gastric cancer diagnosed between 2006 and 2014 were included. The proportion of gastric resections performed and the administration of chemotherapy (irrespective of surgery) within each country were determined. Relative survival according to country was calculated. Results: Overall, 15 057 patients with gastric cancer were included. The proportion of gastric resections varied from 8·1 per cent in the Netherlands and Denmark to 18·3 per cent in Belgium. Administration of chemotherapy was 39·2 per cent in the Netherlands, compared with 63·2 per cent in Belgium. The 6‐month relative survival rate was between 39·0 (95 per cent c.i. 37·8 to 40·2) per cent in the Netherlands and 54·1 (52·1 to 56·9) per cent in Belgium. Conclusion: There is variation in the use of gastrectomy and chemotherapy in patients with metastatic gastric cancer, and subsequent differences in survival.