scholarly journals Effects of the application of therapeutic massage in children with cancer: a systematic review

Author(s):  
Juan Rodríguez-Mansilla ◽  
Blanca González-Sánchez ◽  
Silvia Torres-Piles ◽  
Jorge Guerrero Martín ◽  
María Jiménez-Palomares ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT Objective: to learn about the effects of the use of therapeutic massage in children with cancer. Method: systematic review of controlled clinical trials The search was conducted in November 2014 in the following databases: Pubmed, CSIC, Dialnet, Scopus, Cochrane and PEDro. Inclusion criteria were: clinical trials, published in English or Spanish, analyzing the effects of massage on the different stages and types of childhood cancer (between 1 and 18 years old). Results: of 1007 articles found, 7 met the inclusion criteria. Their authors use different massage techniques (Swedish massage, effleurage, petrissage, frictions, pressures), obtaining benefits in the symptoms present during the illness (decrease of pain, nausea, stress, anxiety and increase of white blood cells and neutrophils). Conclusion: therapeutic massage improves the symptoms of children with cancer, but there is a need for more research that may support the effects attributed to it.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Khaled Khalaf ◽  
Mohamed El-Kishawi ◽  
Shahd Mustafa ◽  
Sausan Al Kawas

Abstract Background: To investigate the effectiveness of technology-enhanced teaching and assessment methods of undergraduate preclinical skills in comparison to conventional methods. Methods: A comprehensive search strategy was implemented using both manual and electronic search methods, including PubMed, Wiley, ScienceDirect, SCOPUS, and the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials. The search and selection of articles that met the inclusion criteria were carried out in duplicates. A Cochrane data extraction form for RCTs was used to extract the relevant information from all included articles. Risk of bias of all included articles was assessed independently by two authors using the Cochrane risk of bias tool. Results: A total of 19 randomized controlled clinical trials met the inclusion criteria and were included in this review. The majority of the studies included in this review have a high risk of bias mainly due to incomplete data, lack of blinding of the examiners, and due to other biases, such as small sample sizes, not accounting for additional hours of training, and the lack of calibration of examiners grading the preparations. Conflicting results were reported in the included studies with regards to whether there were differences between the intervention and control groups in the outcome measure of quality of students’ performance. A meta-analysis could not be done for this study due to the heterogeneity among the included studies.Conclusions: Technology-enhanced teaching and assessment tools used in preclinical skills training of undergraduate dental students have the potential to improve students’ performance. However, due to the conflicting outcomes reported in the 19 studies included in this systematic review and their high risk of bias, better quality studies are required to find a definitive answer to the research question of this systematic review.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
David C. Fajgenbaum ◽  
Johnson S. Khor ◽  
Alek Gorzewski ◽  
Mark-Avery Tamakloe ◽  
Victoria Powers ◽  
...  

AbstractThe emergence of SARS-CoV-2/2019 novel coronavirus (COVID19) has created a global pandemic with no approved treatments or vaccines. Many treatments have already been administered to COVID19 patients but have not been systematically evaluated. We performed a systematic literature review to identify all treatments reported to be administered to COVID19 patients and assess time to clinically meaningful response for treatments with sufficient data. We searched PubMed, BioRxiv, MedRxiv, and ChinaXiv for articles reporting treatments for COVID19 patients published between 12/1/2019–3/27/2020. Data were analyzed descriptively. Of the 2,706 articles identified, 155 studies met inclusion criteria, comprising 9,152 patients from 14 different countries. The cohort was 45.4% female and 98.3% hospitalized and mean (SD) age was 44.4 years (SD 21.0). The most frequently administered drug classes were antivirals, antibiotics, and corticosteroids, and of the 115 reported drugs, the most frequently administered was combination lopinavir/ritonavir, which was associated with a time to clinically-meaningful response (complete symptom resolution or hospital discharge) of 11.7 (1.09) days. There was insufficient data to compare across treatments. A large number of treatments have been administered to the first 9,152 reported cases of COVID19. These data serve as the basis for an open-source registry of all reported treatments given to COVID19 patients. Further work is needed to prioritize drugs for investigation in well-controlled clinical trials and treatment protocols.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Khaled Khalaf ◽  
Mohamed El-Kishawi ◽  
Shahd Mustafa ◽  
Sausan Al Kawas

Abstract Background: To investigate the effectiveness of technology-enhanced teaching and assessment methods of undergraduate preclinical skills in comparison to conventional methods. Methods: A comprehensive search strategy was implemented using both manual and electronic search methods, including PubMed, Wiley, ScienceDirect, SCOPUS, and the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials. The search and selection of articles that met the inclusion criteria were carried out in duplicates. A Cochrane data extraction form for RCTs was used to extract the relevant information from all included articles. Risk of bias of all included articles was assessed independently by two authors using the Cochrane risk of bias tool. Results: A total of 19 randomized controlled clinical trials met the inclusion criteria and were included in this review. The majority of the studies included in this review have a high risk of bias mainly due to incomplete data, lack of blinding of the examiners, and due to other biases, such as small sample sizes, not accounting for additional hours of training, and the lack of calibration of examiners grading the preparations. Conflicting results were reported in the included studies with regards to whether there were differences between the intervention and control groups in the outcome measure of quality of students’ performance. A meta-analysis could not be done for this study due to the heterogeneity among the included studies.Conclusions: Technology-enhanced teaching and assessment tools used in preclinical skills training of undergraduate dental students have the potential to improve students’ performance. However, due to the conflicting outcomes reported in the 19 studies included in this systematic review and their high risk of bias, better quality studies are required to find a definitive answer to the research question of this systematic review.


2021 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
pp. 175346662110280
Author(s):  
Roberto Ariel Abeldaño Zuñiga ◽  
Ruth Ana María González-Villoria ◽  
María Vanesa Elizondo ◽  
Anel Yaneli Nicolás Osorio ◽  
David Gómez Martínez ◽  
...  

Aims: Given the variability of previously reported results, this systematic review aims to determine the clinical effectiveness of convalescent plasma employed in the treatment of hospitalized patients diagnosed with COVID-19. Methods: We conducted a systematic review of controlled clinical trials assessing treatment with convalescent plasma for hospitalized patients diagnosed with SARS-CoV-2 infection. The outcomes were mortality, clinical improvement, and ventilation requirement. Results: A total of 51 studies were retrieved from the databases. Five articles were finally included in the data extraction and qualitative and quantitative synthesis of results. The overall risk of bias in the reviewed articles was established at low-risk only in two trials. The meta-analysis suggests that there is no benefit of convalescent plasma compared with standard care or placebo in reducing the overall mortality and the ventilation requirement. However, there could be a benefit for the clinical improvement in patients treated with plasma. Conclusion: Current results led to assume that the convalescent plasma transfusion cannot reduce the mortality or ventilation requirement in hospitalized patients diagnosed with SARS-CoV-2 infection. More controlled clinical trials conducted with methodologies that ensure a low risk of bias are still needed. The reviews of this paper are available via the supplemental material section.


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