Time and treatments: It is what you make of it that counts

Abstract

The article by Ong and colleagues in this issue studies the proportion of patients who received “potentially futile treatments” during the last 2 weeks of their lives based on a retrospective review of administrative and billing data in one urban academic cancer treatment center.1 They found that among 27 926 active cancer patients, about one in 10 patients had potentially futile interventions in the last 2 weeks of their life, most commonly radiotherapy (8%), chemotherapy (1%) or surgery (1%). The vast majority of the radiotherapy was given with palliative intent (90%), while 84% of the surgery was elective procedures. This analysis is biased as patients who had “potentially futile” treatment, but survived more than 2 weeks (maybe even months) could not be included. While using administrative data has this and other limitations as outlined by the authors, the analyses provide an opportunity to reflect on decision‐making in cancer care.