Conectar
The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted healthcare delivery for patients with breast cancer. eHealth solutions enable remote care and may improve patient activation, which is defined as having the knowledge, skills and confidence to manage one’s health. Thus, we developed the Breast Cancer Treatment Application (app) for patients and practitioners to use throughout the cancer care continuum. The app facilitates virtual assistance, delivers educational resources, collects patient-reported outcome measures and provides individualised support via volunteer e-coaches. Among newly diagnosed patients with breast cancer, we will compare changes in patient activation, other patient-reported outcomes and health service outcomes over 1 year between those using the app and Fitbit, and those receiving standard care and Fitbit only.
This randomised controlled trial will include 200 patients with breast cancer seen at a tertiary care cancer centre in Ontario, Canada. The intervention group (n=100) will use the app in addition to standard care and Fitbit for 13 months following diagnosis. The control group (n=100) will receive standard care and Fitbit only. Patients will complete questionnaires at enrolment, 6 and 12 months post-diagnosis to measure patient activation (Patient Activation Measure-13 score), distress, anxiety, quality of life and experiences with their care and information received. All patients will also receive Fitbits to measure activity and heart rate. We will also measure wait times and number of visits to ambulatory care services to understand the impact of the app on the use of in-person services.
Ethics approval was obtained on 6 January 2023. Protocol version 2.0 was approved on 6 January 2023. The trial is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov. Study findings will be disseminated via publication in a peer-reviewed journal and shared with participants, patient programmes and cancer awareness groups. The app has also been approved as a secure communication method at our trial institution, thus we are well-positioned to support future integration of the app into standard care through collaboration with our hospital network.
Sleep is a fundamental prerequisite for physical and mental health. Poor quality of sleep is common among post-cardiac surgery patients and leads to serious health conditions.
To conduct a systematic review that investigates the effectiveness of eye masks, earplugs and deep-breathing exercise on sleep quality among post-cardiac surgery patients.
A systematic review of interventional studies was established to meet the PRISMA guidelines.
PRISMA guidelines were used to assess the findings of 11 selected studies that met the inclusion criteria, published between 2007 and 2023 across four databases: CINAHL, JDNR, MEDLINE and PubMed. The search was conducted on 23 November 2023.
The 11 most eligible studies were analysed. All of them were interventional, encompassing a total of 787 participants. Randomised controlled trials were the most common design. Interventions included eye masks, earplugs and deep-breathing exercises. The Richards-Campbell Sleep Questionnaire was the most used assessment scale. Most of the reviewed studies found that the use of non-pharmacological interventions (eye masks, earplugs and deep-breathing exercise) significantly improves the quality of sleep. These interventions were also found to have potentially positive effects on reducing pain and delirium experienced by patients after undergoing cardiac surgery.
Non-pharmacological interventions (eye masks, earplugs and deep-breathing exercise) were found to be cost-effective interventions that could be easily applied in the clinical setting and are effective in improving the quality of sleep among patients after cardiac surgery.
FreshRSS 