Chemotherapy might not be a good option for cancer patients at terminal stages of life, says a study published online on 23, Jul 2015 in JAMA Oncology.

Dr. Holly Prigerson, the lead author of the study and director of the Center for Research on End-of-Life Care at Weill Cornell Medical College, said, "Palliative chemotherapy is designed not to cure patients, but to improve symptoms and hopefully extent their lives. So, we wanted to look at whether patients who were getting palliative chemotherapy had better or worse quality of life," according CBS News.

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The researcher and her team studied about 300 patients at end-stage cancer with the deadly disease spread to other parts of the body; among which only a part of the patient received chemotherapy, reported Philly. The patients that had chemotherapy were unresponsive to a bare minimum of one round and sometime multiple rounds of the treatment. The patients were estimated to have an average life expectancy of six months.  

The researchers assessed and ranked the patient's ability to perform their day to day activities such as self-care, walking and simple physical work. Two weeks after the death of the patients, the caregivers or their family members were asked to rate the patient's quality of life through the week prior to death.  

Patient's that received chemotherapy had a worse quality of life than those that haven't had the treatment, noted the researchers after interpretation of the study results, according to NPR. They also added that the patients who didn't receive chemotherapy were able to perform their daily functions better than the other group. Prigerson and team also found that chemotherapy played no role in improving the quality of life in less-functional patients.

Prigerson said, "These data show that incurable cancer patients with a limited life expectancy who use chemotherapy are likely to impair the quality of their remaining days."  

"Regarding chemotherapy use in patients with terminal cancer may need to be revised to recognize the potential harm of chemotherapy use in patients with progressive metastatic disease," wrote Prigerson and her team in their recommendation to the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) guidelines. 

TagsChemotherapy, Quality of life, End-of-Life Care, Cancer, Palliative chemotherapy