Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Research Protocols
Date Submitted: Jan 3, 2024
Open Peer Review Period: Jan 3, 2024 - Feb 28, 2024
Date Accepted: Jul 16, 2024
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Auricular Therapy to Control Pain in Women with Breast Cancer: Protocol of a Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
ABSTRACT
Background:
The increased incidence of breast cancer implies the appearance of frequent symptoms associated with the disease and treatments, such as the pain. For the management of this issue, auricular therapy has been used in a complementary manner, especially for its safety and analgesic action.
Objective:
This systematic review aims to summarize available evidence on the effects of auricular therapy on pain in women undergoing breast cancer treatment.
Methods:
This is a Systematic Review that was include randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that evaluated the effects of auricular therapy on pain in women with breast cancer, as compared to other interventions (sham auricular therapy, other non-pharmacological interventions, and routine pain treatments) during the treatment of the disease. The pain, induced or not by cancer treatments, is the main outcome to be evaluated. The search for the studies was performed in the following databases: MEDLINE via PubMed, CINAHL, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), EMBASE, Web of Science, Scopus, Virtual Health Library (VHL), Traditional, Complementary and Integrative Medicine (MTCI Americas) (BVS), China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) and WangFang. Two reviewers independently evaluated the full texts, extracted the data, and will be assess the risk of bias of the included studies. The certainty of the evidence will be assessed using of the Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development, and Evaluation (GRADE). A meta-analysis will be performed to assess the intervention and the homogeneity of the results, using Cochran's Q test and quantified by Higgins inconsistency index. The guidelines of the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review guidelines and Meta-Analysis Protocols (PRISMA-P) were respected in the elaboration of this protocol.
Results:
The records screening stage has been completed. We hope to complete the synthesis and meta-analysis by February2024 and prepare the manuscript for publication by March 2024. Review reporting will follow standard guidelines for reporting systematic reviews. The results will be published in peer-reviewed scientific journals.
Conclusions:
This review will compile the strength of evidence for the use of auricular therapy in the management of pain in women with breast cancer during the treatment of the disease, identifying gaps in the available evidence as well as assisting health professionals in indicating the intervention for clinical practice. Clinical Trial: PROSPERO CRD42022382433; https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/display_record.php?RecordID=382433
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.