Abstract Background Breast cancer treatment often impacts patients’ quality of life (QoL), with symptoms ranging from fatigue and pain to emotional and functional disturbances. Nurse-led interventions have been proposed to mitigate these effects, yet comprehensive evidence of their efficacy remains varied. Hence, this meta-analysis evaluated the effectiveness of nurse-led interventions on various QoL domains among breast cancer patients. Methods Search strategy included databases such as PubMed, Scopus, Cochrane Library, CINAHL, and Google Scholar. Random-effects meta-analyses were performed to estimate standardized mean difference (SMD); heterogeneity was quantified using I² and τ² with 95% confidence intervals, and small-study effects were explored using funnel plots and Egger’s test. Study quality/risk of bias was appraised with RoB 2 for randomized trials. All analyses were conducted in Stata (version 14.2, StataCorp). Results Interventions showed modest, non-significant improvement in global health status (SMD = 0.265; 95%CI: -0.019 to 0.549) and functional status (SMD = 0.241; 95%CI: -0.009 to 0.491). Significant reduction was noted in fatigue (SMD=-1.328; 95%CI: -2.550 to -0.107). Other outcomes like symptom scores, role functioning, emotional functioning, pain, dyspnea, and nausea/vomiting demonstrated non-significant trends towards improvement. High heterogeneity was observed across most outcomes, indicating variability in intervention effects. Conclusion Nurse-led interventions may offer marginal improvements in certain QoL domains for breast cancer patients, particularly in reducing fatigue. The variability in efficacy across different outcomes suggests need for personalized approaches and further research to optimize these interventions for broader application in oncology care settings. Clinical trial number Not applicable.
Fu et al. (Thu,) studied this question.