Intervention for reducing anxiety during screening mammography: A protocol for systematic review and meta-analysis

BACKGROUND: Mammography is considered a fundamental part of diagnosis in modern health care services. It provides low dose images of normal structures and pathological soft tissues in the breast. Many reports suggested that intervention is playing a positive role in anxiety related to mammography, but there is no high-quality evidence to prove its effects. This paper reports the protocol of a systematic review (SR) and meta-analysis (MA) to clarify effectiveness of intervention during screening mammography. METHODS: A systematic literature search will be performed in the Cochrane Library, PubMed, Embase and Web of Science from inception to July 2020. Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) will be included to evaluate any interventions in the treatment of anxiety related to mammography screening. The main outcome measure is the impact on patient anxiety, and the impact on patient breast cancer worry, the impact on patient satisfaction are the additional outcome measure. Risk of bias assessment of the included RCTs will be carried out using Cochrane Collaboration's tool for RCTs. The Review Manager 5.4 for Windows will be used to perform the MA and generate the result figures. The Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) will be used to evaluate the quality of evidence. Subgroup analysis and sensitivity analysis will be conducted to assess the robustness of the results. RESULTS: A total of 782 English studies of anxiety related to mammography screening were obtained through search. After preliminary screening, 773 non-conforming studies were excluded. Finally, nine English studies of anxiety related to mammography screening will be included for full-text assessment. We will submit the results of this SR and MA to a peer-reviewed journal for publication. CONCLUSIONS: This study will provide reliable evidence for intervention for reducing anxiety in women receiving screening mammography. INPLASY REGISTRATION NUMBER: INPLASY202070131.