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
Number of systematic reviews included 52
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%).
Did the article find that the problem(s) led to qualitative changes in interpretation of the results? N/A
Are the methods of the article described in enough detail to replicate the study? No