Disparities in Breast Cancer–related Lymphedema: A Systematic Review of Inequities and Barriers in Care
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: Breast cancer-related lymphedema (BCRL) is a chronic condition secondary to multimodal cancer treatment. This systematic review summarized the evidence for disparities and barriers surrounding BCRL care, particularly in diagnosis, education, and accessibility to treatment. Methods: A search of PubMed/MEDLINE, Embase, Scopus, and Web of Science following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines was conducted from January 1, 1990, through October 3, 2024. Mixed-methods, qualitative, cross-sectional, multiple-case, longitudinal, and randomized controlled trials that reported disparities and barriers surrounding BCRL care were included. Review articles, editorials, commentaries, abstracts, poster papers, translation or validation of patient-reported outcome measures, and non-English articles were excluded. Results: The search yielded 1059 articles, and 39 met inclusion criteria. Themes identified included the following: racial and ethnic disparities; increased risk associated with younger age, low education level, low income, rural geographic location, and presence of medical comorbidities; inadequate provider and patient knowledge; low patient education; burden and challenges with lifelong self-management; and barriers in receiving healthcare provider diagnosis or adequate BCRL management. Subthemes included cumulative cost burden, psychosocial barriers, and the role of patient self-efficacy. Conclusions: Younger non-White women, residents of rural regions, and those with low income or education levels seemed to be at greatest risk for self-reported (rather than physician-diagnosed) BCRL. Patients of diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds and low socioeconomic status were at increased risk for inadequate self-care education and breast cancer survivorship support. Active prevention with multidisciplinary interventions is imperative to lower BCRL rates, empower breast cancer survivors, and strengthen self-efficacy.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.009 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".