ObjectiveTo systematically review the incidence of financial toxicity among cancer patients in China. MethodsThe Cochrane Library, Web of Science, PubMed, Embase, CINAHL, CNKI, and WanFang databases were searched to collect studies on the prevalence of financial toxicity among cancer patients in China from January 2016 to April 2023. Two reviewers independently screened the literature, extracted data, and assessed the risk of bias of the included studies. A meta-analysis was performed by using Stata 16.0 software. ResultsA total of 24 studies involving 8 799 participants were included. Meta-analysis results showed that the prevalence of financial toxicity among cancer patients was 67.4% (95%CI 60.9% to 74.0%) in China. The subgroup analysis showed that sex, educational level, type of medical insurance, cancer site and stage, the cut-off of the instrument, and region were all influential factors of financial toxicity among cancer patients. ConclusionCurrent evidence shows that high prevalence of financial toxicity among cancer patients. Due to the limited quantity and quality of the included studies, more high-quality studies are needed to verify the above conclusion.
Objective To analyze and evaluate the present status of application of clinical pathway evaluation indexes in China, in order to provide references to establish an evaluation system on clinical pathway. Methods Such databases as CBM (2004-2009), VIP (2004-2009), CNKI (2004-2009) and WanFang Data (2004-2009), and some relevant websites were searched systematically for collecting Chinese literature about domestic clinical pathway evaluation indexes. Results Among the 1 175 articles included, 135 (11%) were published in the core periodicals, 19 (2%) were masterate theses, and 1 021 were other kinds of articles. As to 135 core periodical literature and 19 masterate theses, most of which were graded into the second level of evidence, accounting for 96%. The analysis on the appearance of indexes showed that 87% of inconsistency could be identified between the contents and terms of indexes. Common indexes were summarized as the following four aspects: cost index, clinical index, serving index and quality evaluation index. There were 78% of all the 1 175 articles focusing on the application of nursing and medical education, in which only one masterate thesis used social research methods such as Delphi, focus group, experts scoring (percentile), etc. Conclusion Currently, there are some issues existing in the evaluation indexes of clinical pathway in China, such as low methodological quality of literature, irregularly and randomly using statistical terms, and lack of studies on system construction of clinical pathway evaluation indexes.