Quality of life in home-dwelling cancer patients aged 80 years and older: a systematic review

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativeco mmons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the dataObjective: Quality of Life (QoL) in elderly cancer patients is a topic that has been little explored. This systematic review aims to identify, assess, and report the literature on QoL in home-dwelling cancer patients aged 80 years and older and what QoL instruments have been used. Methods: We systematically searched the databases of Medline, Embase, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), PsykINFO, Scopus, Epistemonikos and Cinahl to identify studies of any design measuring QoL among home-dwelling cancer patients aged 80 years and older. We screened the titles and abstracts according to a predefned set of inclusion criteria. Data were systematically extracted into a predesigned data charting form, and descriptively analyzed. The included studies were assessed according to the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (CASP) checklists, and the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Statement (PRISMA) checklist was used to ensure rigor in conducting our investigations and reporting our fndings. This systematic review was registered in PROSPERO (CRD42021240170). Results: We included three studies that specifcally analyze QoL outcomes in the subgroup of home-dwelling cancer patients aged 80 years and older, with a total of 833 participants having various cancer diagnoses. 193 of the participants included in these three studies were aged 80 years or more. Diferent generic and cancer-specifc QoL instruments as well as diferent aims and outcomes were studied. All three studies used a diagnosis-specifc instrument, but none of them used an age-specifc instrument. Despite heterogeneity in cancer diagnoses, instruments used, and outcomes studied, QoL in home-dwelling cancer patients aged over 80 years old seems to be correlated with age, physical function, comorbidity, living alone, needing at-home care services, being in a poor fnancial situation and having a small social network. Conclusion: Our systematic review revealed only three studies exploring QoL and its determinants in the specifc subgroup of home-dwelling cancer patients aged 80 years and over. A gap in the knowledge base has been identifed. Future studies of this increasingly important and challenging patient group must be emphasized. Subgroup analyses by age must be performed, and valid age and diagnosis specifc QoL instruments must be used to generate evidence in this segment of the population.publishedVersio

Quality of life in home-dwelling cancer patients aged 80 years and older: a systematic review

Objective Quality of Life (QoL) in elderly cancer patients is a topic that has been little explored. This systematic review aims to identify, assess, and report the literature on QoL in home-dwelling cancer patients aged 80 years and older and what QoL instruments have been used. Methods We systematically searched the databases of Medline, Embase, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), PsykINFO, Scopus, Epistemonikos and Cinahl to identify studies of any design measuring QoL among home-dwelling cancer patients aged 80 years and older. We screened the titles and abstracts according to a predefined set of inclusion criteria. Data were systematically extracted into a predesigned data charting form, and descriptively analyzed. The included studies were assessed according to the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (CASP) checklists, and the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Statement (PRISMA) checklist was used to ensure rigor in conducting our investigations and reporting our findings. This systematic review was registered in PROSPERO (CRD42021240170). Results We included three studies that specifically analyze QoL outcomes in the subgroup of home-dwelling cancer patients aged 80 years and older, with a total of 833 participants having various cancer diagnoses. 193 of the participants included in these three studies were aged 80 years or more. Different generic and cancer-specific QoL instruments as well as different aims and outcomes were studied. All three studies used a diagnosis-specific instrument, but none of them used an age-specific instrument. Despite heterogeneity in cancer diagnoses, instruments used, and outcomes studied, QoL in home-dwelling cancer patients aged over 80 years old seems to be correlated with age, physical function, comorbidity, living alone, needing at-home care services, being in a poor financial situation and having a small social network. Conclusion Our systematic review revealed only three studies exploring QoL and its determinants in the specific subgroup of home-dwelling cancer patients aged 80 years and over. A gap in the knowledge base has been identified. Future studies of this increasingly important and challenging patient group must be emphasized. Subgroup analyses by age must be performed, and valid age and diagnosis specific QoL instruments must be used to generate evidence in this segment of the population.publishedVersio

Quality of life and fear of COVID-19 in 2600 baccalaureate nursing students at five universities: a cross-sectional study

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has caused signifcant disruptions in the implementation of programs across educational institutions. Nursing students, being both young adults and by practical training, part of the health care system, may be particularly vulnerable during the COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of this study was to explore the associations between self-reported fear of COVID-19, general health, psychological distress and overall quality of life (QoL) in a sample of Norwegian baccalaureate nursing students compared to reference data. Methods: The survey targeted baccalaureate nursing students from fve universities in February 2021. An electronic questionnaire consisted of the Fear of COVID-19 Scale (FCV-19S), the Hopkins Symptom Checklist 5 (SCL-5), one general health and one overall QoL question. The respondents’ mean scores were compared to reference data. Hierarchical regression analyses were conducted, and efect sizes (Cohen’s d) were evaluated. Results: In total, 2605 out of 6088 (43%) students responded. Their FCV-19S scores (mean 2.45, CI 2.42, 2.48) were signifcantly higher than those of the reference population (mean 1.8, P<0.001). Nursing students scores showed signifcantly lower general health (mean 3.50±0.93 SD, population mean=3.57, Cohen’s d=0.07), higher levels of psychological distress (mean 2.68±1.03 SD, population mean=2.12, Cohen’s d=0.55) and lower overall QoL (mean 5.50±2.16 SD, population mean=8.00, Cohen’s d=1.16) compared to pre-pandemic reference data. FCV-19S scores were signifcantly associated with levels of general health (Cohen’s d=0.26), psychological distress (Cohen’s d=0.76) and overall QoL (Cohen’s d=0.18). Conclusions: Baccalaureate nursing students reported worse outcomes during the Covid-19 pandemic on general health, psychological distress and overall QoL compared to the reference population. Level of fear of Covid-19, however, accounted for few of these diferences. Other factors related to the pandemic may have reduced nursing students’ overall QoL