Cancer

Study: Obese Women Get Less Chemotherapy

Griggs

Overweight and obese women often receive intentionally reduced doses of chemotherapy, which affects their prognosis for recovery, according to a new study led by a Medical Center doctor.

In the study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, Jennifer Griggs, associate professor and a cancer specialist at the James P. Wilmot Cancer Center, analyzed the treatment of 9,672 women treated across the country for breast cancer.

She found that the chemotherapy regimen prescribed for overweight women often varies from that recommended for healthy-weight women even though the study found no evidence that overweight women are more prone to side effects than leaner women.

“It is clear there is some uncertainty among doctors on how best to dose chemotherapy in heavy patients,” Griggs says. “This study adds to other research by demonstrating that dosing chemotherapy using actual body weight is safe and may help address some of the uncertainty. We have here an opportunity to improve the quality of all aspects of cancer care.”

The issue of the proper chemotherapy dosage is increasingly important as more Americans struggle with obesity, Griggs notes. Current standards call for doctors to figure chemotherapy based on body surface area, calculated by height and weight and expressed in square meters.

But due to concerns that the formula might provide too much medication to large women and cause toxic side effects, some doctors make adjustments to reduce the regimen based on women’s weight.

Griggs and her colleagues researched the treatment given for patients diagnosed with different stages of breast cancer who received chemotherapy between 1990 and 2001 at 901 oncology practices across the country.