Investigating the Use of Serious Games for Cancer Control Among Children and Adolescents: Scoping Review (Preprint)

Abstract

BACKGROUND Effective healthcare services that meet the diverse needs of children and adolescents with cancer are required to alleviate their physical, psychological, and social challenges and improve their quality of life. Previous studies showed that serious games help promote people’s health. However, the potential for serious games to be used for successful cancer control for children and adolescents with cancer has received less attention and is relatively unknown. OBJECTIVE This scoping review aimed to map the use of serious games in cancer prevention and cancer care for children and adolescents and provide future directions of developing and implementing serious games to perform successful cancer control for young people. METHODS This study followed a combination of the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews and the Joanna Briggs Institute framework for the conduct of scoping reviews. PubMed, CINAHL Plus Full Text, Scopus, Web of Science Core Collection, and APA PsycINFO databases were used for the search. RESULTS From the initial 2,750 search results, 63 articles were included in the review. Most of the studies were cancer care serious game articles (55/63, 87%) and a small number of studies were cancer prevention serious game articles (8/63, 13%). The majority of the included studies were published between 2019 and 2023 (cancer prevention: 5/8, 63% and cancer care: 35/55, 64%). The majority of the studies were conducted in Europe (cancer prevention: 3/8, 38% and cancer care: 24/55, 44%) and North America (cancer prevention: 4/8, 50% and cancer care: 17/55, 31%). The age group of adolescents was the largest one that participated in the included studies (cancer prevention: 8/8, 100% and cancer care: 46/55, 84%). All (8/8, 100%) cancer prevention serious game articles included healthy people as participants, and 45 out of 55 (82%) cancer care serious game articles included cancer patients. The majority of cancer prevention serious game articles addressed game preference as a target outcome (4/8, 50%). The majority of cancer care serious game articles addressed symptom management as a target outcome (28/55, 51%). Of the cancer care studies examining serious games for symptom management, the majority of the studies were conducted to treat psychological (13/55, 24%) and physical symptoms (10/55, 18%). CONCLUSIONS This review study shows both the growth of interest in the use of serious games for cancer control among children and adolescents and the bias into the relevant literature. The different article distribution suggests that serious games can be used in various ways for cancer control among children and adolescents while highlighting the need to develop and implement serious games in underrepresented areas.