Recent Status and Methodological Quality of Return-to-Work Rates of Cancer Patients Reported in Japan: A Systematic Review

Cancer patients’ return-to-work rates in Japan and their methodological quality have been little reported. We conducted a systematic review to explore the recent return-to-work rates and to assess the methodological quality of the existing literature. We selected 13 papers (2 in English and 11 in Japanese) published between 2005 and 2017. The return-to-work rates ranged from 53.8% to 95.2%. Of the selected papers, 12 papers employed a cross-sectional design, possessing high risk of selection bias due to participant selection. A total of 8 papers did not fully report the subjects’ sex, age, employment status at cancer diagnosis, cancer site, stage, and treatment, suggesting high risk of selection bias due to confounding variables. High or unclear risk of attrition bias due to incomplete outcome data was detected in 12 papers in which data on return to work were not collected from all participants. High risk of reporting bias due to selective outcome reporting was pointed out in 6 studies in which the subjects’ employment status at return to work or the duration between cancer diagnosis and assessment of return to work was unclear. Future studies must reduce the risk of selection, attrition, and reporting biases for specifying accurate return-to-work rates.