Effect of Applying Digital Health in Palliative Care for Patients with Advanced Cancer: a Meta-analysis and Systematic Review

Overview

Journal Support Care Cancer

Specialties Critical Care
Oncology

Date 2024 Sep 19

PMID 39297984

Authors

Bingyan Zhao

Siai Zhang

Tongyu Zhang

Yu Chen

Chunmei Zhang

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Purpose: To assess the effectiveness of applying digital health palliative care to improve symptoms, mood, and quality of life in patients with advanced cancer.

Methods: We searched PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, Cochrane Library (CENTRAL), and CINAHL databases on November 16, 2023, to identify randomized controlled trials of the impact of palliative care applying digital health on patients with advanced cancer. The Cochrane Risk of Bias Tool version 1.0 was used to evaluate the quality of randomized controlled trials.

Results: A total of 20 randomized controlled trials were included, of which 18 were meta-analyzed. Compared with usual care, palliative care applying digital health was effective in improving symptoms (SMD = -0.21, 95% CI: -0.37 to -0.06, P = 0.007) and reducing the intensity of pain (SMD = -0.49, 95% CI: -0.85 to -0.13, P = 0.008) in patients with advanced cancer, but no effective improvement in depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, or quality of life was found.

Conclusions: Our systematic review provides evidence that palliative care applying digital health has great potential to improve symptoms in patients with advanced cancer, but more research is needed to explore its impact on mood and quality of life.

Citing Articles

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PMID: 39520275 PMC: 11737001. DOI: 10.1002/ijc.35253.

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