Predicting the risk of chemotherapy toxicity in older patients: The Chemotherapy Risk Assessment Scale for High‐Age Patients (CRASH) score

Tools are lacking to assess the individual risk of severe toxicity from chemotherapy. Such tools would be especially useful for older patients, who vary considerably in terms of health status and functional reserve.

The authors conducted a prospective, multicentric study of patients aged ≥70 years who were starting chemotherapy. Grade 4 hematologic (H) or grade 3/4 nonhematologic (NH) toxicity according to version 3.0 of the Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events was defined as severe. Twenty-four parameters were assessed. Toxicity of the regimen (Chemotox) was adjusted using an index to estimate the average per-patient risk of chemotherapy toxicity (the MAX2 index). In total, 562 patients were accrued, and 518 patients were evaluable and were split randomly (2:1 ratio) into a derivation cohort and a validation cohort.