Can we better manage Unfit older cancer patients?

The term Unfit refers to older cancer patients not amenable with standard treatment and needing therefore a modified or attenuated treatment or also not deserving an active therapeutic approach. To determine whether an old patient is Unfit a Multidimensional Geriatric Evaluation is needed, but to spare time, shortened tools of evaluation are now in a phase of development. Most of the available data on older cancer patients derive from clinical prospective studies carried out in a selected population, with the exclusion then of Unfit patients. The challenge of this special issue of CTR is that of providing a clinically useful information on the basis of the results of the available studies and expert opinion in the main tumor types.