CHICAGO -- Doctors may be denying older cancer patients potentially life-saving therapies out of misguided perceptions that their age makes them unsuitable candidates, researchers at a cancer conference said here Saturday.

Ageism -- or age discrimination -- is nowhere more apparent than in the treatment of breast cancer, an affliction of predominantly older women, according to a panel of experts speaking at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.

Half of all new breast cancer cases are seen in women over the age of 65, yet doctors appear to reserve the most aggressive treatments for the younger patients, possibly because they think that older cancer sufferers are too frail to endure the rigors of chemotherapy or simply will not live long enough to reap the rewards, studies suggested.

A European study, presented here Saturday, found that doctors were much less likely to recommend radiation therapy or chemotherapy to breast cancer patients over the age of 75, following surgery to save their breast.

Only six percent of women aged 75 and up were offered post-surgery chemotherapy, compared to about 35 percent of women between the ages of 50 and 75, according to a review of the medical records of almost 3,000 women with invasive breast cancer seen at the European Institute of Oncology in Milan, Italy.

There was a similar age-bias in the selection of candidates for follow-up radiation therapy, according to the study of almost 2,999 post-menopausal women who were treated at the institute between 1997 and 2002.

A separate study presented by U.S. researchers showed that women in their late 60s with breast cancer that had spread to the lymph nodes were well able to tolerate, and -- more importantly -- derived just as much benefit from chemotherapy as younger women.

An analysis of data culled from four different trials showed "that older patients seem to derive the same benefit from treatment as younger patients, without undue toxicity," AFP quoted Hyman Muss, a professor of medicine at the University of Vermont and lead author of the study, as saying.

"It would be a shame to have a healthy 70 year old patient who is playing tennis who has 10 positive nodes and not consider that patient for treatment that could save a lot of lives in similar patients," Muss told reporters. "Age as a bias is wrong."