ReviewCancers2025
Patient Education and Communication in Palliative Radiotherapy: A Narrative Review.
Review in Cancers, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
12 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Palliative radiotherapy (PRT) is central to symptom control in advanced cancer, yet referrals are often late, and patients and clinicians frequently hold misconceptions about intent, benefits, and logistics. Patient education may address these gaps, but the PRT-specific evidence base has not been consolidated. We conducted a narrative review following SANRA guidance. We searched PubMed, Scopus, and the Cochrane Library for English-language studies from 1 January 2000 to 18 July 2025. Eligible articles evaluated structured patient-education interventions or characterized education or communication content, information needs, or decision processes among adults referred to or receiving PRT. Two reviewers independently screened and extracted data. Owing to heterogeneity of designs and endpoints, we performed a narrative synthesis without meta-analysis. Six studies met criteria: two randomized controlled trials, two prospective pre-post studies, one qualitative interview study, and one observational communication study, conducted in the Netherlands, the United States, Canada, and Hong Kong. Education at referral or consultation improved knowledge, reduced decisional uncertainty, and increased readiness to proceed with PRT. Education integrated with treatment improved symptom outcomes, including higher rates of pain control at 12 weeks and faster time to pain control when a nurse-led pain-education program accompanied PRT for painful bone metastases, and improvements in dyspnea, fatigue, anxiety, and function in advanced lung cancer. Observational and qualitative work showed low patient question-asking and persistent curative expectations; overall quality of life generally did not change. Although the evidence is limited and heterogeneous, targeted, standardized education appears to improve decision quality and selected symptoms in PRT pathways. Pragmatic multi-site trials and implementation studies are needed to define content, timing, personnel, and delivery models that are scalable in routine care.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.