Background: Cancer survivorship research is a well-established field of enquiry in Australia with a robust community of practice. Internationally, increasing attention is being given to advanced/metastatic cancer survivorship. It is unknown to what extent Australia’s cancer survivorship research reports on advanced/metastatic survivorship.
Aim: To: (1) map the range and nature of cancer survivorship research in Australia; (2) understand the extent to which this research includes advanced/metastatic cancer survivors.
Methods: MEDLINE, PsychInfo, EMBASE and CINAHL were searched for English language, peer-reviewed Australian survivorship research. Inclusion criteria: >18 years old; research that identifies as being ‘cancer survivorship’ or ‘cancer survivor’; conducted in Australia. Two reviewers screened titles/abstracts and reviewed full-text articles. Data were charted, collated and summarised.
Results: 1930 papers were identified; 370 met the inclusion criteria. Of these, 147 studies required participants to be post-treatment, stage I-III or both. 223 studies did not explicitly exclude individuals with advanced/metastatic cancer; however, of these 223 studies, 101 studies did not report having recruited any advanced/metastatic cancer participants. A further 65 studies included participants with advanced/metastatic cancer but did not report data separately from early cancer survivors. In total, only 57 reported data relating to advanced/metastatic cancer survivors. These 57 advanced/metastatic survivorship studies are currently being categorised into the five themes identified at the 2021 NCI ‘Survivorship for individuals living with advanced and metastatic cancers workshop’: (1) epidemiology/surveillance; (2) symptom management: (3) psychosocial; (4) health care delivery; and (5) health behaviours.
Conclusion: Preliminary analysis indicates that Australian cancer survivorship research focuses primarily on individuals with early stage or curable cancer. Given the increasing number of people living with advanced/metastatic cancer and their high unmet needs, Australian funders, policymakers and researchers may wish to consider how to improve representation of advanced/metastatic cancer survivors in survivorship research or fund and plan targeted advanced/metastatic cancer survivorship research.