An umbrella review of systematic reviews on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on cancer prevention and management, and patient needs

Ref ID 893
First Author T. Muka
Journal ELIFE
Year Of Publishing 2023
URL https://elifesciences.org/articles/85679
Keywords • COVID
• Risk of bias
• Oncology
• Transparency
• Protocols
• Low methodological quality
• Non-Cochrane reviews
• Disclosure
Problem(s) • Reasons for excluding potentially eligible studies not provided
• Conflicts of interest or funding of included studies not assessed
• Risk of bias not incorporated into conclusions of review
• Low methodological (AMSTAR) quality
• No registered or published protocol
Article Type Empirical
Article Subtype Cross-sectional survey/Methodological systematic review
First Author Country Switzerland
Checklists • AMSTAR 2
Aim To summarize the findings from systematic reviews on impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on cancer treatment modification, delays, and cancellations; delays or cancellations in screening and diagnosis; psychosocial well-being, financial distress, and use of telemedicine as well as on other aspects of cancer care.
Level of Investigation Descriptive
Summary of Findings From 52 included systematic reviews on impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on cancer treatment modification, delays, and cancellations indexed across PubMed and WHO COVID-19 up to November 2022. Only two reviews scored moderate to high methodological quality using AMSTAR-2, while the rest (43/52; 82.6%) were evaluated as low or critically low quality. Almost half of the included reviews (25/50; 48.0%) did not report a protocol; only 3 provided a list of excluded studies (5.7%) and just 4 reported on sources of funding of included studies (7.6%); an assessment of risk in individual studies when interpreting/discussing the results was only carried out in 8 reviews (15.3%).
Number of systematic reviews included 52
Number of eligible systematic reviews assessed 1170