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Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews

Corticosteroids for adult patients with advanced cancer who have nausea and vomiting (not related to chemotherapy, radiotherapy, or surgery)

Overview of attention for article published in Cochrane database of systematic reviews, July 2017
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  • In the top 25% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (80th percentile)

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257 Mendeley
Title
Corticosteroids for adult patients with advanced cancer who have nausea and vomiting (not related to chemotherapy, radiotherapy, or surgery)
Published in
Cochrane database of systematic reviews, July 2017
DOI 10.1002/14651858.cd012002.pub2
Pubmed ID
Authors

Petra Vayne‐Bossert, Alison Haywood, Phillip Good, Sohil Khan, Kirsty Rickett, Janet R Hardy

Abstract

Nausea is a common symptom in advanced cancer, with a prevalence of up to 70%. While nausea and vomiting can be related to cancer treatments, such as chemotherapy, radiotherapy, or surgery, a significant number of people with advanced cancer also suffer from nausea unrelated to such therapies. Nausea and vomiting may also cause psychological distress, and have a negative impact on the quality of life of cancer patients; similarly to pain, nausea is often under-treated. The exact mechanism of action of corticosteroids on nausea is unclear, however, they are used to manage a number of cancer-specific complications, including spinal cord compression, raised intracranial pressure, and lymphangitis carcinomatosis. They are also commonly used in palliative care for a wide variety of non-specific indications, such as pain, nausea, anorexia, fatigue, and low mood. However, there is little objective evidence of their efficacy in symptom control, and corticosteroids have a wide range of adverse effects that are dose and time dependent. In view of their widespread use, it is important to seek evidence of their effects on nausea and vomiting not related to cancer treatment. To assess the effects of corticosteroids on nausea and vomiting not related to chemotherapy, radiotherapy, or surgery in adult cancer patients. We searched CENTRAL, MEDLINE Ovid, Embase Ovid, CINAHL EBSCO, Science Citation Index Web of Science, Latin America and Caribbean Health Sciences (LILACS), Conference Proceedings Citation Index - Science Web of Science, and clinical trial registries, from inception to 23rd August 2016. Any double-blind randomised or prospective controlled trial that included adults aged 18 years and over with advanced cancer with nausea and vomiting not related to chemotherapy, radiotherapy, or surgery were eligible for the review, when using corticosteroids as antiemetic treatment. All review authors independently assessed trial quality and extracted data. We used arithmetic means and standard deviations for each outcome to report the mean difference (MD) with 95% confidence interval (CI). We assessed the quality of the evidence using GRADE and created a 'Summary of findings' table. Three studies met the inclusion criteria, enrolling 451 participants. The trial size varied from 51 to 280 participants. Two studies compared dexamethasone to placebo, and the third study compared a number of additional interventions in various combinations, including metoclopramide, chlorpromazine, tropisetron, and dexamethasone. The duration of the studies ranged from seven to 14 days. We included two studies (127 participants) with data at eight days in the meta-analysis for nausea intensity; no data were available that incorporated the same outcome measures for the third study. Corticosteroid therapy with dexamethasone resulted in less nausea (measured on a scale of 0 to 10, with a lower score indicating less nausea) compared to placebo at eight days (MD 0.48 lower nausea, 95% CI 1.53 lower to 0.57 higher; very low-quality evidence), although this result was not statistically significant (P = 0.37). Frequency of adverse events was not significantly different between groups, and the interventions were well tolerated. Factors limiting statistical analysis included the lack of standardised measurements of nausea, and the use of different agents, dosages, and comparisons. Subgroup analysis according to type of cancer was not possible due to insufficient data. The quality of this evidence was downgraded by three levels, from high to very low due to imprecision, likely selection bias, attrition bias, and the small number of participants in the included studies. There are few studies assessing the effects of corticosteroids on nausea and vomiting not related to chemotherapy, radiotherapy, or surgery in adult cancer patients. This review found very low-quality evidence which neither supported nor refuted corticosteroid use in this setting. Further high quality studies are needed to determine if corticosteroids are efficacious in this setting.

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Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 257 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
Unknown 257 100%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Master 36 14%
Student > Bachelor 28 11%
Researcher 19 7%
Other 17 7%
Student > Ph. D. Student 17 7%
Other 44 17%
Unknown 96 37%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Medicine and Dentistry 66 26%
Nursing and Health Professions 32 12%
Psychology 12 5%
Pharmacology, Toxicology and Pharmaceutical Science 10 4%
Social Sciences 8 3%
Other 23 9%
Unknown 106 41%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 10. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 27 February 2022.
All research outputs
#3,630,587
of 25,461,852 outputs
Outputs from Cochrane database of systematic reviews
#6,223
of 12,090 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#62,532
of 326,338 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Cochrane database of systematic reviews
#148
of 208 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 25,461,852 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done well and is in the 85th percentile: it's in the top 25% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 12,090 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 38.2. This one is in the 48th percentile – i.e., 48% of its peers scored the same or lower than it.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 326,338 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done well, scoring higher than 80% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 208 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one is in the 28th percentile – i.e., 28% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.