Quality of Life in Cancer Patients: The Modern Psycho-Oncologic Approach for Romania—A Review

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Abstract

Quality of life (QOL) is an important indicator of human satisfaction and well-being. QOL is significantly and persistently affected for patients after a cancer diagnosis. Despite some evidence suggesting that psycho-oncologic interventions can provide lasting benefits, the inclusion of such interventions in cancer therapy is not universal. This article provides an overview of the known approaches to the evaluation of QOL in cancer patients and various interventions for improving patients’ outcomes, with a focus on the eastern European regional and specific Romanian context. With a mortality rate above and cancer care performance below the EU average and unequally distributed, Romania urgently needs a national coordination program, which is discussed in our review, highlighting the main psychological tools needed for the assessment and the challenges involved in implementing the program. In the end, we suggest some directions for the future development of the psycho-oncologic approach in the context of social considerations, policy, and the unexpected financial challenges the nation provides.

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PRISMA Extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR): Checklist and Explanation

Adrian Aldcroft, Chantelle Garritty, Simon Lewin … (2018)

Scoping reviews, a type of knowledge synthesis, follow a systematic approach to map evidence on a topic and identify main concepts, theories, sources, and knowledge gaps. Although more scoping reviews are being done, their methodological and reporting quality need improvement. This document presents the PRISMA-ScR (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews) checklist and explanation. The checklist was developed by a 24-member expert panel and 2 research leads following published guidance from the EQUATOR (Enhancing the QUAlity and Transparency Of health Research) Network. The final checklist contains 20 essential reporting items and 2 optional items. The authors provide a rationale and an example of good reporting for each item. The intent of the PRISMA-ScR is to help readers (including researchers, publishers, commissioners, policymakers, health care providers, guideline developers, and patients or consumers) develop a greater understanding of relevant terminology, core concepts, and key items to report for scoping reviews.

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PRISMA2020: An R package and Shiny app for producing PRISMA 2020‐compliant flow diagrams, with interactivity for optimised digital transparency and Open Synthesis

Neal R. Haddaway, Matthew J. Page, Chris C. Pritchard … (2022)

Background Reporting standards, such as PRISMA aim to ensure that the methods and results of systematic reviews are described in sufficient detail to allow full transparency. Flow diagrams in evidence syntheses allow the reader to rapidly understand the core procedures used in a review and examine the attrition of irrelevant records throughout the review process. Recent research suggests that use of flow diagrams in systematic reviews is poor and of low quality and called for standardised templates to facilitate better reporting in flow diagrams. The increasing options for interactivity provided by the Internet gives us an opportunity to support easy‐to‐use evidence synthesis tools, and here we report on the development of a tool for the production of PRISMA 2020‐compliant systematic review flow diagrams. Methods and Findings We developed a free‐to‐use, Open Source R package and web‐based Shiny app to allow users to design PRISMA flow diagrams for their own systematic reviews. Our tool allows users to produce standardised visualisations that transparently document the methods and results of a systematic review process in a variety of formats. In addition, we provide the opportunity to produce interactive, web‐based flow diagrams (exported as HTML files), that allow readers to click on boxes of the diagram and navigate to further details on methods, results or data files. We provide an interactive example here; https://prisma-flowdiagram.github.io/ . Conclusions We have developed a user‐friendly tool for producing PRISMA 2020‐compliant flow diagrams for users with coding experience and, importantly, for users without prior experience in coding by making use of Shiny ( https://estech.shinyapps.io/prisma_flowdiagram/ ). This free‐to‐use tool will make it easier to produce clear and PRISMA 2020‐compliant systematic review flow diagrams. Significantly, users can also produce interactive flow diagrams for the first time, allowing readers of their reviews to smoothly and swiftly explore and navigate to further details of the methods and results of a review. We believe this tool will increase use of PRISMA flow diagrams, improve the compliance and quality of flow diagrams, and facilitate strong science communication of the methods and results of systematic reviews by making use of interactivity. We encourage the systematic review community to make use of the tool, and provide feedback to streamline and improve their usability and efficiency.

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The Quality of Life Scale (QOLS): Reliability, Validity, and Utilization

Carol Burckhardt, Kathryn Anderson (2003)

The Quality of Life Scale (QOLS), created originally by American psychologist John Flanagan in the 1970's, has been adapted for use in chronic illness groups. This paper reviews the development and psychometric testing of the QOLS. A descriptive review of the published literature was undertaken and findings summarized in the frequently asked questions format. Reliability, content and construct validity testing has been performed on the QOLS and a number of translations have been made. The QOLS has low to moderate correlations with physical health status and disease measures. However, content validity analysis indicates that the instrument measures domains that diverse patient groups with chronic illness define as quality of life. The QOLS is a valid instrument for measuring quality of life across patient groups and cultures and is conceptually distinct from health status or other causal indicators of quality of life.

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Author and article information

Contributors

Monica Licu: (View ORCID Profile)

Claudiu Gabriel Ionescu: (View ORCID Profile)

Journal

Title: Current Oncology

Abbreviated Title: Current Oncology

Publisher: MDPI AG

ISSN (Electronic): 1718-7729

Publication date Created: July 2023

Publication date (Electronic): July 20 2023

Volume: 30

Issue: 7

Pages: 6964-6975

Article

DOI: 10.3390/curroncol30070504

PubMed ID: 37504364

SO-VID: ac829b0d-1dfd-4df2-b8bb-779429f26494

License:

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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