Effect of telehealth intervention on breast cancer patients’ quality of life and psychological outcomes: A meta-analysis:

IntroductionTelehealth intervention has been proposed as an innovative intervention approach to breast cancer patients, but there are still conflicting results in the literature about its effect.MethodsPubMed, EMBASE, CENTRAL and China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) were searched from inception to 3 October 2016 for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) which assessed the effect of telehealth intervention versus usual care in breast cancer patients. No language restrictions were used. Standardized mean difference (SMD) with corresponding 95% confidence interval (95% CI) was pooled when needed. Subgroup and sensitivity analyses were conducted if necessary and feasible.ResultsTwenty RCTs with a total of 2190 participants were included into this meta-analysis. Compared with usual care, telehealth intervention was associated with higher quality of life (SMD = 0.60, 95% CI 0.18–1.01, p = 0.005) and self-efficacy (SMD = 0.59, 95% CI 0.19–0.98, p = 0.003), with less depression (SMD = −1.29, 95% CI −2.28 ...