The Effect of Fatigue-Reducing Interventions on Fatigue Levels of Children with Cancer: A Meta-Analysis Study

INTRODUCTION: This study was carried out to analyze the effect of fatigue-reducing interventions on fatigue levels of children with cancer.
METHODS: The quantitative studies carried out in the literature related to the interventions to reduce fatigue in children with cancer were investigated. No time limits were defined for the literature review; instead, all available studies published until February 2019 were reviewed. Data were collected from Pubmed, Cochrane, EBSCO Host, ScienceDirect, Embase/Elsevier, and Web of Science databases. The keywords “child”, “cancer”, and “fatigue” were used during the search process. The effect sizes and group comparisons of each study were analyzed using The Comprehensive Meta-Analysis statistical software package for the meta-analysis.
RESULTS: The total sampling number of the five studies included in the study was 500. As a result of the heterogeneity test, it was determined that the studies involving interventions to reduce the fatigue of children with cancer had heterogeneous characteristics. The result of publication bias test found no publication bias. The average effect size at 95% significance level was calculated as 1.452 for Li et al. (2018) study, 0.560 for Ramezani et al. (2018) study, 7.606 for Kudubeş et al. (2019) study, -0.995 for Lam et al. (2018) study, and 0.544 for Viera et al. (2015) study.
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: In this study, fatigue-reducing interventions were found to affect fatigue level.