Cancer patients often do better with less intensive treatment, new research finds

Scaling back treatment for three kinds of cancer can make life easier for patients without compromising outcomes, doctors reported at the world’s largest cancer conference.

It’s part of a long-term trend toward studying whether doing less — less surgery, less chemotherapy or less radiation — can help patients live longer and feel better. The latest studies involved ovarian and esophageal cancer and Hodgkin lymphoma.

Thirty years ago, cancer research was about doing more, not less. In one sobering example, women with advanced breast cancer were pushed to the brink of death with massive doses of chemotherapy and bone marrow transplants. The approach didn’t work any better than chemotherapy and patients suffered.

Now, in a quest to optimize cancer care, researchers are asking: “Do we need all that treatment that we have used in the past?”