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Cancer patients usually take many medications. The proportion of patients with advanced cancer who are taking futile drugs is unknown.

We retrospectively reviewed the charts of all consecutive ambulatory patients with advanced cancer and who were receiving supportive care exclusively at palliative care clinics, Princess Margaret Hospital, to gather information on futile medications used by them. Futile medications were defined as unnecessary (when no short-term benefit to patients with respect to survival, quality of life, or symptom control was anticipated) or duplicate (two or more drugs from the same pharmacological class). Summary statistics were used to describe the results.

From November 2005 to July 2006, 82 (22%) of 372 patients were taking at least one futile …