Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Randomised Controlled Trials of Psychosocial Interventions for Cancer-Related Fatigue in Adult Post-treatment Cancer Survivors.

Abstract

There is evidence to suggest that psychosocial interventions may be effective in reducing fatigue during active treatment in cancer patients.It is still unclear how effective such interventions may be post-treatment. The Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL PsycINFO, Web of Science and CancerLit were searched. RCTs were included which evaluated psychosocial interventions for fatigue in adults post cancer-treatment. One author screened titles. Two authors independently screened the remaining abstracts for their eligibility for inclusion. The search returned 6,380 papers. Following an assessment of the abstracts approximately 24 papers remained. Two authors independently extracted data from studies using a standard data extraction form and assessed the risk of bias of the selected studies. Education and CBT were the most commonly used psychosocial interventions for this group. This review is the first to evaluate the effectiveness of psychosocial interventions for cancer-related fatigue following cancer treatment. Findings will inform the literature, as well as policy makers & stake-holders, to ameliorate fatigue in this group.