A team of researchers from Australia conducted the study and published their findings in Supportive Care in Cancer.<\/p>\n
The researchers defined the age group of children and adolescents as individuals aged 0 to 19 years and highlighted that 400,000 children within this age range are diagnosed with cancer every year, increasing the need for targeted psychosocial interventions to address supportive care needs, particularly among children and adolescents undergoing intensive and invasive treatment regimens.<\/p>\n
Health outcomes were divided into three categories for analysis: neurocognitive, psychologic, and health-related quality of life (HRQOL). Investigators performed a search across five databases, including APA PsycINFO, MEDLINE, Scopus, CINAHL, and the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL).<\/p>\n
No date restrictions were added to the search criteria, and investigators augmented their search through \u201cbackward citation chaining of the reference lists of included studies and relevant systematic reviews.\u201d They imported eligible citations into systematic review software, which was used to identify duplicate studies and to aid the \u201cstudy selection process.\u201d<\/p>\n
A total of 2,961 studies were identified through the investigators\u2019 search, and 34 studies across 17 countries including 1,988 participants were selected for inclusion.<\/p>\n
According to the results, studies that analyzed the impact of cognitive interventions \u201cdemonstrated a significant positive effect on neurocognitive outcomes (SMD [standardized mean difference]: 0.51 [95% CI: 0.32, 0.69]; I2\u2009=\u20090%, p\u2009<\u20090.01).\u201d<\/p>\n
Factors that were found to significantly improve psychosocial outcomes among children and adolescents with cancer included animal therapy, self-management education, physical activity, play-based therapies, and creative therapies (SMD, 0.42; 95% CI, 0.17- 0.68; I2=70.1%; P<0.01).<\/p>\n
Similar factors were found to also improve HRQOL outcomes, including animal therapy, play-based therapies, creative therapies, and physical activity (SMD, 0.80; 95% CI, 0.48- 1.11; I2=87.1%; P<0.01).<\/p>\n
Investigators highlighted that these findings support potential interventions for enhancing neurocognitive, psychologic, and HRQOL outcomes among children and adolescents with cancer but underscored that their study also revealed \u201csubstantial evidence gaps, particularly for early targeted approaches in the cancer care continuum.\u201d<\/p>\n
Although the study did not show that psychosocial interventions had an effect on specific psychosocial factors, such as depression, coping, self-worth, fatigue, and overall HRQOL, investigators emphasized that psychosocial interventions improved the three domains of neurocognitive, psychologic, and HRQOL within the scope of their research, and most benefits were observed with neurocognition.<\/p>\n
\u201cFuture trials should identify optimal intervention timing, dosage and delivery format, and stratify outcomes by age, diagnosis, and treatment intensity,\u201d they concluded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A team of researchers from Australia conducted the study and published their findings in Supportive Care in Cancer.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":610796,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[134,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-610795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-health","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=610795"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610795\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/610796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=610795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=610795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=610795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}