The effect of multidisciplinary team on survival rates of women with breast cancer: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Breast cancer is quite frequent all around the world. This disease was responsible for an estimated 2.1 million malignancies in 2022, making it the seventh-highest cause of cancer deaths globally. A multidisciplinary team (MDT) care policy was developed in the United Kingdom (UK) in 1995 to enhance the quality of care for cancer patients. The purpose of this systematic review and meta-analysis study is to assess the effects of MDT on breast cancer survival rates. METHODS: This study was conducted in accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) 2020. Systematic search was conducted in several international databases including Google Scholar, PubMed, EBSCOhost, and Proquest from 2012 to 2022. The authors used RevMan 5.4 to do the meta-analysis of the pooled hazard ratio. Newcastle–Ottawa Scale to measure the risk of bias. Newcastle–Ottawa Scale evaluated participant selection, comparability, and reporting of results using eight subscale items. Egger’s test funnel plot was used to assess the potential publication bias for this study. RESULTS: A total of 1187 studies were identified from research database. The authors found a total of six studies from six different countries (China, the UK, Taiwan, Australia, Africa, and France) included for this study. Based on the meta-analysis of the pooled hazard ratio of the included studies, the authors found that the overall effect size of the study was 0.80 (CI 95%: 0.73–0.88). CONCLUSIONS: Breast cancer patients who participated in well-organized MDT discussions had a greater survival rate than those who did not.