CU Anschutz researcher leads team of international experts to address a major gap in care
Loneliness and social isolation have garnered national and international attention in recent years for the negative health effects they can have on the general population. But those impacts can be even more pronounced in a group that has historically been overlooked: older patients with cancer.
And with age as the main risk factor for cancer, Enrique Soto Pérez de Celis, MD, PhD, a geriatric oncology specialist, recently took up the challenge of finding a better path forward for this older group of patients facing both cancer and loneliness.
"Loneliness has been widely discussed in public health, but in geriatric oncology in particular, it has been mostly overlooked," said Soto, an associate professor in the CU Anschutz Department of Medicine's Division of Medical Oncology. "Definitions vary, and there has been no shared framework for action. So creating that framework was very important for us."
Key Points:
Loneliness is a key concern among older patients with cancer and worsens health outcomes and treatment adherence.
A CU Anschutz oncologist and researcher helped lead an international effort to set the first standards and definitions for loneliness in older patients with cancer.
The guidance includes early intervention and a focus on each individual patient's lived experiences. CU Anschutz will also begin operations on a geriatric cancer specialty clinic this year.
Also the CU Anschutz Cancer Center's associate director of global oncology, Soto and a research team brought together international experts through the Multinational Association for Supportive Care in Cancer to agree on how to define, assess, and address loneliness in older adults with cancer. The resulting work created practical and internationally-informed guidance for treating patients that can also be used as a foundation to construct research.
In the following Q&A, Soto explains the risk loneliness poses in older patients with cancer and what the new consensus identified as critical areas for providers and researchers to address.
