What are the late effects of older gastric cancer survivors? A scoping review

OBJECTIVE: Older gastric cancer survivors account for a high proportion of cancer survivors. To improve their quality of life, a cancer survivorship care plan with a consideration of the late effects is required. This study aimed to understand the extent and type of evidence in relation to the late effects in older gastric cancer survivors. METHODS: We conducted a scoping review based on the JBI scoping review framework. We explored articles in the Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System Online (MEDLINE), SCOPUS, Web of science, Excerpta Medica dataBASE (EMBASE), Research InformationSharing Service (RISS), Korean Medical dataBASE(KMBase), and National Digital Science Library (NDSL) databases published from January 1, 2012, to December 31, 2021. The keywords used for search are “gastric cancer”, “aged”, “survivors”, and “late effect or long-term effect or late symptom or time factors”. While 439 records were initially identified, 14 articles were eventually selected based on the inclusion criteria. RESULTS: Most studies were conducted in 2019 (4 studies, 28.6%), and more than half (8 studies, 57.1%) were conducted in Asia. In total, six definitions of cancer survivors were found in the studies. The most common age range in the studies was 60–64 years (7 studies, 50.0%). The second primary cancer risk was the most common late effects (5 studies, 20.8%). Among 14 studies, there was only one study of intervention study (7.1%). CONCLUSIONS: It is time to shift the focus from survival to care that improve the quality of life after treatment. We suggest future studies to define cancer survivors, set the age criteria and characterize the late effects in older gastric cancer survivors.