Gloria Vanderbilt’s Stomach Cancer, Could Anything Have Been Done?

When someone reaches the “ripe” old age of 95 and dies, we can feel good that they’ve had a long life. But in medicine we see far too much ageism, decisions being made based on age. A twenty-year-old may get a surgery that an 80-year-old is refused. For stomach cancer, a recent analysis found that elderly patients were as good as younger patients at recovering afterward.

But stomach cancer is usually found too late to do anything for any patient. The early symptoms of stomach cancer are so much like heartburn that a patient may let symptoms advance for a decade or more before seeking medical help. Gloria Vanderbilt’s stomach cancer was already advanced, meaning that it had progressed beyond the stomach. Even at earlier stages, the survival rate for patients is 18%. Beyond that stage, virtually no medical intervention could have prolonged her life more than six months.

It is common to also look at her life and wonder if something Gloria Vanderbilt did along the way may have increased her risk of cancer. No, she probably didn’t get all her fruits and vegetables, but having more of those doesn’t prevent stomach cancer. (They do help with many other cancers.) What about coffee? Americans drinking coffee do have a higher risk. But that risk pales in comparison to smoking. Images of Gloria Vanderbilt smoking are so iconic they have been made into posters for sale.

There are newer treatments for stomach cancer, but surgery remains the main treatment. We need to realize that a societal acceptance of heartburn as “normal” and treatable by antacids has a real risk of allowing stomach cancer to progress to the untreatable stage as it did with Gloria Vanderbilt.

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