Is Digital Intervention for Fear of Cancer Recurrence Beneficial to Cancer Patients?: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

Objective: This study aimed to compare the effectiveness of digital and face-to-face interventions in reducing fear of cancer recurrence (FCR) among individuals with cancer.

Methods: This study was conducted in accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines for evaluating the efficacy of psychological interventions for FCR published between July 2018 and December 2021. We searched for research papers using PubMed, Embase, and Cochrane and assessed their quality using the Revised Cochrane risk-of-bias tool for randomized trials.

Results: Of the 2113 identified studies, we analyzed 17 samples (N = 1482) from 14 studies, of which 13 were RCTs. The overall sample showed a moderate effect size (Hedges' g = 0.607; 0.356 to 0.858; p < 0.001; I  = 81.29%) in FCR reduction. The overall effect size was 0.621 (95% CI, 0.276 to 0.966; p < 0.001; I  = 81.78%) for face-to-face interventions and 0.517 (95% CI, 0.093 to 0.941; p = 0.017; I  = 83.19%) for digital interventions. The difference between the two effect sizes was not statistically significant.

Conclusion: Our meta-analysis suggests that digital interventions are moderately effective in reducing FCR, similar to face-to-face interventions. However, given the high degree of heterogeneity, this conclusion should be interpreted with caution. Further studies are required to identify the most effective digital interventions and the populations that may benefit from them.