Are patients with advanced cancer receiving treatment aligned with their goals?

Study reveals that many patients believe they are receiving goal-discordant care.

2025-08-25

(Press-News.org) New research indicates that many patients with advanced cancer report receiving treatment focusing on longevity over comfort, even when their goal is the opposite. The findings are published by Wiley online in CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society.

Treatment of serious illnesses generally aims to optimize longevity and quality of life, but in some cases, these goals are at odds with each other. Therefore, clinicians must strive to understand each individual’s objectives so that patients do not receive burdensome treatments that go against their wishes.

“When treating advanced cancer, the goal is to help patients live as long and as well as possible. But sometimes, patients and oncologists face tough choices, especially when the goals of living longer and staying comfortable begin to compete with one another,” said lead author Manan P. Shah, MD, of the University of California, Los Angeles.

To assess the relationship between patients’ preferences and their treatment, Dr. Shah and his colleagues analyzed survey responses from adults with advanced cancer and other serious illnesses who were enrolled in a multi-site trial of advance care planning.

Among 1,099 patients in the study, 49% of the 231 patients with advanced cancer preferred comfort-focused care, and 16% of the 231 patients died within 2 years. These proportions were similar to those observed in the 868 patients with other serious illnesses (48% and 13%). Among patients preferring comfort-focused care, patients with cancer were more likely than patients with other illnesses to report receiving discordant life-extending care (37% versus 19%).

Also, life-extending care did not appear to actually extend life in patients who did not wish to receive it. Among patients with cancer preferring comfort-focused care, there was no significant difference in 2-year mortality between those who reported receiving discordant life-extending versus concordant comfort-focused care.

“This disconnect between what patients want and what they feel they’re getting is an important issue,” Dr. Shah said. “One takeaway is that doctors need to have open conversations with patients about their goals, clearly explain the intent of the treatment they are providing, and try to reconcile any real or perceived discordance between goals and treatment.”

Additional information
NOTE: The information contained in this release is protected by copyright. Please include journal attribution in all coverage. A free abstract of this article will be available via the CANCER Newsroom upon online publication. For more information or to obtain a PDF of any study, please contact: Sara Henning-Stout, newsroom@wiley.com

Full Citation:
“Patient-reported discordance between care goals and treatment intent in advanced cancer.” Manan P. Shah, Neil S. Wenger, John Glaspy, Ron D. Hays, Rebecca L. Sudore, Maryam Rahimi, Lisa Gibbs, Sidharth Anand, Chi-Hong Tseng, and Anne M. Walling. CANCER; Published Online: August 25, 2025 (DOI: 10.1002/cncr.35976).
URL Upon Publication: http://doi.wiley.com/10.1002/cncr.35976

Author Contact: Denise Heady, at DHeady@mednet.ucla.edu

About the Journal    
CANCER is a peer-reviewed publication of the American Cancer Society integrating scientific information from worldwide sources for all oncologic specialties. The objective of CANCER is to provide an interdisciplinary forum for the exchange of information among oncologic disciplines concerned with the etiology, course, and treatment of human cancer. CANCER is published on behalf of the American Cancer Society by Wiley and can be accessed online. Follow CANCER on X @JournalCancer and Instagram @ACSJournalCancer, and stay up to date with the American Cancer Society Journals on LinkedIn.

About Wiley     
Wiley is one of the world’s largest publishers and a trusted leader in research and learning. Our industry-leading content, services, platforms, and knowledge networks are tailored to meet the evolving needs of our customers and partners, including researchers, students, instructors, professionals, institutions, and corporations. We empower knowledge-seekers to transform today’s biggest obstacles into tomorrow’s brightest opportunities. For more than two centuries, Wiley has been delivering on its timeless mission to unlock human potential. Visit us at Wiley.com. Follow us on Facebook, X, LinkedIn and Instagram.

END

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Genetic testing of IVF embryos helps women over 35 conceive faster

2025-08-25

Genetic testing of IVF-created embryos could help more women over 35 have a baby in less time, a clinical trial by researchers from King’s College London, King’s College Hospital, and King’s Fertility has found. Published today in the Journal of Clinical Medicine, this is the first randomised controlled trial worldwide to focus exclusively on women aged 35–42, a group at higher risk of producing embryos with chromosomal abnormalities. The trial looked at the use of Preimplantation genetic testing for aneuploidy (PGT-A) to check embryos ...

Survey: People not aware knee, groin pain can be signs of hip problems

2025-08-25

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Having a hard time bending over to put your shoes on? Experiencing pain in the knees, groin, thigh or back? A new survey by The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center reveals many people don’t realize these symptoms can mean there’s a problem in the hip. The survey of 1,004 people in the United States shows 72% are not aware that knee pain can actually be a sign of a hip problem. Similarly, 69% miss groin pain and 66% miss thigh pain as rooted in the hip. “Patients will be referred to me for knee pain,” explained Matthew Beal, MD, an orthopedic surgeon at Ohio State Wexner Medical Center. “When I examine the patient, ...

New guideline offers menu of options to help people quit smoking tobacco

2025-08-25

Tobacco smoking is the number one cause of preventable disease and death in Canada; it is highly addictive and hard to stop. Recognizing these challenges, a new guideline from the Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care provides a menu of effective options to help people quit smoking, with behavioural and medication options and a natural health product that can be tailored and combined for personal choice. The guideline is published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) https://www.cmaj.ca/lookup/doi/10.1503/cmaj.241584. “Quitting ...

"Turning spin loss into energy", developing a key technology for ultra-low power next-generation information devices

2025-08-25

Dr. Dong-Soo Han's research team at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) Semiconductor Technology Research Center, in collaboration with the research teams of Prof. Jung-Il Hong at DGIST and Prof. Kyung-Hwan Kim at Yonsei University, has developed a device principle that can utilize "spin loss," which was previously thought of as a simple loss, as a new power source for magnetic control. Spintronics is a technology that utilizes the "spin" property of electrons to store and control information, and it is being recognized as a key foundation for next-generation information processing technologies such as ultra-low-power ...

Evidence, not ideology, must guide preventive health care

2025-08-25

A recent review of the Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care underscores the need for expert bodies to produce evidence-based guidance and that Canada should ensure a renewed task force is adequately funded and supported, argues a commentary in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) https://www.cmaj.ca/lookup/doi/10.1503/cmaj.251038. Dr. Vivek Goel, President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Waterloo and author of the commentary, chaired the External Expert Review panel that reviewed the task force’s structure, ...

Kids in disadvantaged zip codes face up to 20 times higher odds of gun injuries

2025-08-25

Children residing in “very low-opportunity” neighborhoods are up to 20 times more likely to be hospitalized for gun injuries than those living in the most advantaged areas, reports a new multi-state study published in Pediatrics. The study also found that most hospitalizations for gun injuries among children under 18 are the result of unintentional shootings — incidents caused by mishandling or accidental discharge of a gun. “The fewer opportunities a child has in their neighborhood, the greater their odds of ending up in the hospital with a firearm injury,” said co-author Dr. Mehul Raval, Head of Pediatric ...

Gun injury odds up to 20x higher for kids in disadvantaged ZIP codes

2025-08-25

Study analyzed nearly 7,000 pediatric gun injuries and mapped odds by ZIP code Kids in ‘low-opportunity’ neighborhoods far more likely to be shot than those in ‘high-opportunity’ areas ‘High-opportunity’ kids are far less likely to be shot, but twice as likely to die when it happens Authors stress urgent need for safe storage and firearm safety education CHICAGO --- Children residing in “very low-opportunity” neighborhoods are up to 20 times more likely to be hospitalized ...

Younger men have higher risk for mortality and cardiovascular disease for type 2 diabetes than type 1 diabetes; whereas for women type 1 diabetes outcomes are worse at all ages

2025-08-24

The first study of its kind to compare cardiovascular risk in type 1 diabetes (T1D) and type 2 diabetes (T2D) in both men and women shows that younger men with T2D have worse mortality and cardiovascular disease (CVD) outcomes than those with T1D, whereas for women of all ages, almost all outcomes are worse for T1D than for T2D. The study is by Dr Vagia Patsoukaki, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden, and colleagues and is presented at this year’s Annual Meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) in Vienna, Austria (15-19 September). CVD is the leading cause of death and morbidity worldwide and individuals with ...

Freeze-framing the cellular world to capture a fleeting moment of cellular activity

2025-08-23

Osaka, Japan – Optical microscopy is a key technique for understanding dynamic biological processes in cells, but observing these high-speed cellular dynamics accurately, at high spatial resolution, has long been a formidable task. Now, in an article published in Light: Science & Applications, researchers from The University of Osaka, together with collaborating institutions, have unveiled a cryo-optical microscopy technique that take a high-resolution, quantitatively accurate snapshot at a precisely selected timepoint in dynamic ...

Computer hardware advance solves complex optimization problems

2025-08-22

A line of engineering research seeks to develop computers that can tackle a class of challenges called combinatorial optimization problems. These are common in real-world applications such as arranging telecommunications, scheduling, and travel routing to maximize efficiency. Unfortunately, today’s technologies run into limits for how much processing power can be packed into a computer chip, while training artificial-intelligence models demands tremendous amounts of energy. Researchers at UCLA and UC Riverside have demonstrated a new approach that overcomes these ...

Are patients with advanced cancer receiving treatment aligned with their goals?

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES: