Effect of psychosocial interventions on the quality of life of patients with colorectal cancer: a systematic review and meta-analysis

BACKGROUND: We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials examining the effect of psychosocial interventions on the quality of life of patients with colorectal cancer. METHODS: We searched the main health-related databases for relevant papers. Then, we examined the titles and abstracts of the retrieved papers, applying exclusion criteria to filter out irrelevant papers; a more in-depth filtering process was then conducted by reading the full texts. Eight studies remained at the end of this process. Next, we performed data extraction and assessed the methodological quality of the selected studies. This was followed by computation of effect sizes and the heterogeneity of the results, and then an assessment of the potential bias. RESULTS: The systematic review found that most of the interventions in these eight studies did not have a significant effect on quality of life. Meanwhile, the meta-analysis, the overall effect of psychosocial interventions at the post-intervention period was found to be statistically significant but small. CONCLUSIONS: This meta-analysis provides evidence for the beneficial effect of face-to-face psychosocial interventions on the quality of life of colorectal cancer patients. It is, however, suggested that further studies be conducted on this topic to assess the roles of physical functioning and severity of symptoms before utilizing such face-to-face interventions. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12955-018-0943-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.