Treatment for elderly not always worth it, say advisers

Britain, UK news from The Times and The Sunday Times - Times Online: "ELDERLY patients could be denied some treatments because of their age under new proposals set out by the Government’s national health advisory body.
The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), which provides guidance on health issues for England, confirmed yesterday that it had set out the controversial ideas in a consultation paper.



Members of the institute’s Citizen’s Council said that in cases in which age could affect the benefits or risks of treatment, medical staff would be justified in discriminating.

Charities have raised concern that the views, which will be taken into account by the institute when it makes recommendations about policy or drugs, could lead to the elderly being refused some services.

Gordon Lishman, director- general of Age Concern, said that the consultation document indicated that elderly people could suffer further discrimination from the NHS. He said that policies against the elderly already existed in cases such as breast cancer screening, which was denied to women over 70 as a routine procedure. Rates of breast cancer in this age group remain highest, at close to 350 per 100,000 people. Some mental health initiatives also revealed age discrimination, the charity said, including situations where pensioners were moved from consultations with a psychiatrist to dementia schemes simply on the grounds of age.

The Citizen’s Council, a panel of 30 members of the public which considers ethical and moral judgments on behalf of the institution, had been asked to discuss issues of age last year. It followed discussion of whether health services should discriminate against the obese or those who smoke.

The institute’s report recommended that all patients should be treated equally regardless of age, gender, race, or socio- economic status. But it said that there should be exceptions if a patient’s condition was self-inflicted and the “self-inflicted causes of the condition influences the likely outcome of the use of the intervention”. The second exception should apply “where age is an indicator of benefit or risk”. In these cases “age discrimination is appropriate”, the report recommended.

The institute said that the issue of treatment for different age groups was a common one and that any discrimination would have to be based on justifiable clinical evidence. "