2024 update

For this updated review version, we made several amendments from the protocol (de Boer 2009b).

• We excluded seven RCTs from the first two versions of this review (de Boer 2011; de Boer 2015), because in this update we focussed on interventions that can be launched to enhance RTW in people with cancer, regardless of medical treatment. These seven excluded RCTs concerned solely medical and pharmaceutical interventions.

• Accordingly, the objectives of this review version have been changed to: To evaluate the effectiveness of non‐medical interventions aimed at enhancing return to work (RTW) in people with cancer compared to alternative programmes including usual care or no intervention. See Objectives.

• We did not use the OSH‐ROM database because it is not supported by our organisation.

• We did not used the DARE database because no new records have been published to DARE since 2015.

• We visually inspected forest plots for similarity of point estimates to indicate statistical heterogeneity. We assessed publication bias by visually inspecting funnel plot asymmetry when at least 10 RCTs were available in the meta‐analysis, because when there are fewer studies the power of the tests is low. This is in line with the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions. However, this is a deviation from the protocol when we stated a minimum of five studies was needed for a funnel plot test (de Boer 2009b).

• We did not pool the QoL outcomes of Purcell 2011, because the outcomes were reported as medians and IQRs.

• We excluded Rogers 2009, which was included in previous review versions (de Boer 2011; de Boer 2015), because the RTW outcomes were reported as a mean change in the number of sick leave days instead of the number of sick leave days.

• For cluster‐RCTs, we assessed five additional domains of risk of bias (Richardson 2016): recruitment bias (differential participant recruitment in clusters for different interventions); baseline imbalance; loss of clusters; incorrect analysis; and comparability with individually randomised trials.

Note: in the next update of this review, we will assess risk of bias in included studies using the Cochrane RoB 2 tool as per guidance in the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions (Higgins 2023).

2015 update

For the 2015 updated review version (de Boer 2015), we made several amendments.

• We excluded non‐randomised studies because it was clear that randomised studies are feasible and have been conducted. This proved that our earlier understanding was mistaken in that it would be difficult to randomise in this context. This had been the main reason for including non‐randomised studies.

• Work retention was not considered a primary outcome because the aim of this review was to evaluate the effectiveness of interventions aimed at enhancing RTW not on work retention. The primary outcome was instead: RTW measured as event data such as the number of people who RTW.

• We added physical interventions to the type of interventions included in this review due to clinical relevance. They were not listed in the protocol.

• Subgroup analyses according to setting and quality of study were no longer planned.