By Jimmy Downs

Sunday Nov 25, 2012 (foodconsumer.org) -- Radiation therapy or radiotherapy may not be justified in many patients with a terminal cancer, according to a study in in Journal of Clinical Oncology.

B.A. Guadagnolo at University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas and University of Chicago in Chicago, Illinois and colleagues found one in five dying cancer patients still received radiation therapy in one third of the last 30 days of life.

This happened either because they were ill-informed of their medical conditions or radiation doctors did not want to give up the treatment until the patients die, a health observer suggests.

(According to a radiologist, hospitals require doctors to follow a standard protocol, which means that doctors should not inform their patients as such when radiation treatment does not help them so doctors can continue treating the cancer patients).

Researchers found the unjustified use of radiation therapy after analysing claims data on 202,299 patients dying from lung, breast, prostate, colorectal and pancreatic cancers from 2000 to 2007.

Specifically, 7.6 % patients received radiation therapy in the last month of life. The use of radiation therapy was correlated with nonclinical factors including race, gender, income and hospice care, the researchers found.  Of these patients, 17.7% received radiotherapy for more than 10 days in the last 30 days.

The researchers "More research is needed into physician decision making regarding use of RT (radiation therapy) for patients with end-stage cancer."