Prediction of survival benefit when deciding between chemotherapy and best supportive therapy in elderly patients with advanced gastric cancer: A retrospective cohort study

It remains unclear whether elderly patients (EPs) with advanced gastric cancer (AGC) benefit from chemotherapy. The aim of the present study was to examine the prognostic factors for EPs with AGC in order to generate a prognosis-predicting scoring system. This single-center retrospective study examined consecutive patients with AGC between April 2012 and July 2017. Risk factors for survival in EPs aged ≥75 years were identified using a Cox proportional hazards model, and a prognostic scoring system was generated and retrospectively evaluated to determine its usefulness for predicting patient prognosis. A total of 61 patients were enrolled as EPs (mean age, 81 years) and compared with 80 non-EPs (mean age, 66 years). The median survival time (MST) was significantly longer for non-EPs compared with that for EPs (3.8 vs. 10.1 months, respectively; P=0.0447). Among the EPs, 29 (48%) received chemotherapy and 32 received best supportive care (BSC). A total of 68 non-EPs (85%) received chemotherapy and 12 non-EPs received BSC. Among EPs with AGC, age-adjusted multivariate analysis revealed that performance status (PS), neutrophil/lymphocyte ratio (NLR)