Mindfulness interventions for physical and psychological outcomes in cancer patients and caregivers: Non-English literature may be lost in translation due to language bias.

Abstract

Key points Although mindfulness practices have originated in East Asia, including non‐English literature in systematic reviews of mindfulness interventions for cancer care will enable researchers to explore its application in various cultural contexts. A systematic analysis of online bibliographic databases: AMED, Embase, CINHAL, LILACS, MEDLINE, ProQuest Central, PsycINFO, PsycArticles, and WoS revealed that non‐English literature accounted for 2.72% of original research papers on mindfulness where no language restriction was applied. This suggests that the exclusion of non‐English literature in systematic reviews on mindfulness interventions for cancer care may not lead to a biased effect size if a search is restricted to articles indexed in an English language‐specific database. In comparison, an exploratory analysis of the China National Knowledge Infrastructure database revealed a higher percentage, up to 19.2% of indexed non‐English language literature. The authors caution that results of systematic reviews of mindfulness interventions that exclude non‐English databases may still constitute a biased generalizability because most literature published in non‐English journals are not indexed in major research databases.