The psychosocial experiences of women with breast cancer across the lifespan: a systematic review protocol.

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Review question/objective What are the psychosocial experiences of women with breast cancer across the lifespan, including similarities and differences in the psychosocial experiences of younger, middle-aged and older women with breast cancer? Inclusion criteria Types of participants This review will consider studies that include women with a breast cancer diagnosis of any type or stage, with the exception of a cancer recurrence. Women with a recurrence will be excluded since the experience of recurrence has been shown, through research, to be dissimilar to the experience of the first diagnosis and treatment of the disease. The experience of women in all treatment modalities will be included (i.e. lumpectomy, mastectomy of all types with or without breast reconstruction, chemotherapy, radiation therapy and hormone therapy). This review will consider studies that include age as a primary area of interest in the study design. That is, the study will focus on: 1) younger women or older women, or 2) a psychosocial issue and compare it across the lifespan from younger to older. The definition of “younger” and “older” will not be described by the reviewers prior to the review because no consensus has been reached in the literature about defining “young” and “old” in cancer. However, this will be observed in the studies and reported on in the analysis. Therefore, studies that identify the participants as “young” and/or “old”, and provide a range of ages of the participants, will be included. Studies will be excluded if they do not define their population(s) by age or if they combine younger and older populations together. Phenomenon of interest The phenomenon of interest is women’s psychosocial experience of breast cancer, including the social, psychological, emotional, spiritual and quality-of-life aspects of cancer. Context This review will include women from all geographical regions. It will also include all cancer care contexts (e.g. acute care hospital, ambulatory care setting, home care, primary health care).