858 - A systematic review and meta-analysis of the distress thermometer for the screening of distress in Chinese patients with cancer

Background

Screening and management of distress are essential. The Distress thermometer (DT) is a common screening tool However, it’s cutoff score and the accuracy properties such as sensitivity and specificity is still unclear in Chinese cancer patients.

Methods

A systematic search was conducted in PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, CNKI, Wanfang and VIP databases. Four tabular data were extracted, then pooled sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative likelihood ratios (PLR and NLR), diagnostic odds ratio (DOR) were calculated. The area under the curve (AUC) was summarized from receiver operating characteristic (SROC) curves with Meta-Disc version 1.4and publication bias with STATA 12.0 software.

Results

Seven publications describing 2515 Chinese cancer patients were included and six studies of 1919 samples comparing the DT with the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale-Total (HADS-T) were merged in the meta-analysis. The optimal cut-off score of 4 shows the balance between the pooled sensitivity (0.74, 95%CI 0.71-0.77) and pooled specificity (0.85, 95%CI 0.83-0.87), while the AUC of SROC is 0.88.

Conclusions

The DT with the cut-off score 4, is an effective screening tool in Chinese patients with cancer.

Clinical trial identification

Editorial acknowledgement

Legal entity responsible for the study

The author.

Funding

Has not received any funding.

Disclosure

The author has declared no conflicts of interest.