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Meta-Analysis
. 2024 Mar;13(6):e7046.
doi: 10.1002/cam4.7046.

Physical function patient-reported outcomes among adolescent and young adult cancer survivors: A systematic review

Sarah Tanner  1 , Teyl Engstrom  1 , Cheryl Forbes  1 , Dhaval Patel  1 , Wen Ray Lee  2 , Rick Walker  3   4   5 , Natalie Bradford  6 , Jason D Pole  1   7
Affiliations
Meta-Analysis

Physical function patient-reported outcomes among adolescent and young adult cancer survivors: A systematic review

Sarah Tanner et al. Cancer Med. 2024 Mar.

Abstract

Background: The physical challenges faced by adolescents and young adults (AYA) after a cancer diagnosis may be different from those experienced by paediatric and older adult cancer patients. Patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) are valuable tools that can be useful in exploring the experiences of AYAs and identifying important issues, recurrent themes and areas to potentially improve quality of life.

Objective: We compared patient-reported physical function outcomes between AYAs diagnosed with cancer and non-cancer controls.

Method: This paper builds on a scoping review published in early 2023 and focuses on PROMs related to physical function.

Results: This systematic review includes 16 studies that measured and reported on physical function PROMs in AYA cancer survivors compared with their cancer-free peers. Of these studies, 14 found that physical function in AYA survivors was significantly worse. This paper also includes a meta-analysis conducted on 5 studies using the EORTC-QLQ-C30 to measure physical function, which found that physical function score was an average of 7.03 (95% CI: -10.21, -3.86) points lower in the AYA cancer group, compared to their cancer free-peers, a difference that is clinically meaningful.

Conclusions: The results overwhelmingly demonstrate that AYAs post a cancer diagnosis have worse health-related quality of life from a physical function perspective than their cancer-free peers, providing a compelling argument for the need to address this issue. All but one of the studies were cross-sectional, which highlights the need for further assessment of this group longitudinally throughout their cancer journey.

Keywords: adolescent; cancer; cancer survivors; patient‐reported outcome measures; physical function; routinely collected health data; young adult.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no potential conflicts of interest.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
PRISMA study selection diagram. From: Page MJ, McKenzie JE, Bossuyt PM, Boutron I, Hoffmann TC, Mulrow CD, et al. The PRISMA 2020 statement: an updated guideline for reporting systematic reviews. BMJ 2021;372:n71. doi: 10.1136/bmj.n71. For more information, visit: http://www.prisma‐statement.org/.
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
Meta‐analysis results.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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