Mitchell B. Slavin

TL;DR: Although fatigue is a common symptom among cancer patients, it is also a common experience in the general, healthy population, and its universality has made it difficult to appreciate whether the fatigue experienced by patients with cancer is distinguishable from the fatigue experience by the general population.

TL;DR: Hemoglobin increases have been associated with quality of life (QOL) improvements in anemic cancer patients treated with epoetin alfa, but intervention generally has been reserved for symptomatic anemia or hemoglobin < 10 g/dL.

TL;DR: Informal caregiving costs are substantial and should be considered when estimating the cost of cancer treatment in the elderly, and were estimated to be $1,200 per patient and just over $1 billion nationally.

TL;DR: The cost of outpatient RBC transfusions in cancer patients is higher than previously reported, in part because overhead costs and fixed costs might have been underestimated in previous studies.

TL;DR: Epoetin can be used cost effectively in the treatment of anaemic patients with cancer under a broad range of plausible assumptions, and quality-adjusted life-years have limited applicability here because, as a short term supportive treatment, epoetin enhances the quality but not the length of life.