Older cancer patients are much less likely to receive any of the common types of treatment for cancer than are middle-aged cancer patients, according to a National Cancer Registry report published yesterday.
It found that between 1994 and 2001, cancer patients in the 70-to-79 age group had treatment rates which were half to a third those of cancer patients in the 50-to-59 age group.
The director of the National Cancer Registry, Dr Harry Comber, said this was not the case in the US. "There seems to be a tendency not to treat older patients in Ireland," he added.
However when asked if ageism was a factor, he said older patients were likely to be less physically fit than younger patients and therefore might be less fit for radical treatment.
Mr Thomas Lynch, a consultant urological surgeon at St James's Hospital, Dublin, said cancers behaved differently in different age groups.
"If you treat all cancers in the same way regardless of age, you could be overtreating some cancer patients," he said.
The report, Cancer in Ireland 1994-2001, which highlights a major increase in reported cases of prostate cancer in recent years, said there was an average of 7,584 cancer deaths a year between 1994 and 2001.
Breast cancer was the commonest cause of cancer deaths in women, at an average of 644 a year, while lung cancer was the most common cause in men, with an average of 965 a year. There were on average 519 deaths from prostate cancer each year over the period.
While the number of cases of cancer is increasing by about 2.3 per cent a year, the report stresses that this seems to be almost entirely due to changes in the size and age of the population rather than people having a greater risk of developing cancer.
The report states that, while cancer cases are increasing, the risk of dying is falling by an average of 1 per cent a year.
"The risk of dying of leukaemia, lymphoma, kidney and gallbladder cancer increased, while the risk of dying of cancers of the head and neck, bladder, stomach, breast and larynx fell," it said.
The report indicates that the kind of treatment for different types of cancer seems to depend on which area the patient lives in. Hormone treatment for breast cancer, for example, was commonest in Galway and low around Dublin, while hormone treatment for prostate cancer was twice the national average in Donegal and 11 per cent above the average in a broad area of the west, southwest and midlands.
Radiotherapy rates for breast and lung cancer were higher around Dublin than in the northwest and west.
The incidence of certain cancers is also higher in some regions. Prostate cancer was found to be highest in the southwest, and a significantly increased incidence of bowel cancer in women was seen in Cork and Donegal and in men in Cork and Dublin.
Lung cancer incidence was "significantly elevated" for women in Dublin and for men in Dublin, Kildare and Louth.