There is, moreover, a lack of prospective studies directly comparing the outcomes and the tolerability of chemotherapy in young and elderly patients, although some data are available in gastric cancer from a retrospective analysis . Trumper et al. evaluated retrospectively 1,080 patients who were enrolled into three randomized controlled trias assessing 5-FU-based combination chemotherapy. They found that elderly patients obtained similar benefits from palliative chemotherapy in terms of symptomatic response, tumor regression, and survival, without increased toxicities.