Effectiveness of perioperative family-centered educational interventions in the anxiety, pain and behaviors of children/adolescents and their parents: Systematic Review Protocol

Introduction: Every year, millions of children and adolescents undergo surgery, 50%-75% of them experience fear and anxiety. Children are particularly susceptible to stress and anxiety surrounding surgery as a result of their cognitive development, previous experiences, and knowledge about healthcare; this leads to additional interventions to prevent and reduce these symptoms. Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of family-centered educational interventions in the children’s and adolescents’ anxiety, pain, and behaviors and their parents’ anxiety during the perioperative period. Methods: This review will follow the Joanna Briggs Institute guidelines for systematic reviews of effectiveness and will consider those studies (experimental and quasi-experimental) in which perioperative educational interventions have been applied to children and adolescents and their parents; these studies measured children and adolescents’ pain, anxiety, and behaviors, as well as their parent’s anxiety. An initial search of MEDLINE and CINAHL will be followed by a second search for published and unpublished studies from January 2007 on, available in English, Spanish and Portuguese. After all full texts are retrieved, the methodological quality assessment and data extraction will be independently and critically evaluated by two reviewers, and the data will then be presented in a tabular format. An explanatory synthesis will accompany the results. Whenever possible, a meta-analysis will be performed, and a Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development, and Evaluation Summary of Findings will be presented. Expected Results: This review will provide guidance on how family-centred educational interventions can be used as a resource to manage anxiety, pain, and behavior in children, adolescents and their relatives during the perioperative processes.