Breast Cancer Surgery PSP Question Verification Form

  • Published: 04 July 2022
  • Version: V1
  • 2 min read

The purpose of this Question Verification Form is to enable Priority Setting Partnerships (PSPs) to describe clearly how they checked that their questions were unanswered, before starting the interim prioritisation stage of the process.

The JLA requires PSPs to be transparent and accountable in defining their own scope and evidence checking process. This will enable researchers and other stakeholders to understand how individual PSPs decided that their questions were unanswered, and any limitations of their evidence checking.

Name of the PSP

Breast Cancer Surgery

Please describe the scope of the PSP

The scope of the Breast Cancer Surgery PSP was defined as including all areas of breast cancer care in which breast surgeons are primarily involved in clinical management or where surgical input is central to multi-disciplinary treatment.

This included but was not limited to:

  • assessment, diagnosis and primary treatment selection for women and men with invasive and non-invasive breast cancer
  • surgical techniques, technologies and devices, including oncoplastic and reconstructive breast cancer surgery, and their implementation and evaluation
  • interactions between surgical treatments and neoadjuvant/adjuvant systemic and loco-regional therapies
  • quality of life issues related to the surgical treatment of breast cancer
  • identification and management of people at increased risk of breast cancer

Excluded were questions relating to:

  • aesthetic breast surgery in individuals without breast cancer
  • adjuvant breast cancer treatments including chemotherapy, radiotherapy and endocrine therapy
  • preclinical or basic science research relating to breast disease.

Please provide a brief overview of your approach to checking whether the questions were unanswered

A high-level pragmatic evidence check was undertaken focusing on high-quality clinically relevant data sources to identify the most up-to-date and relevant evidence.

Please list the type(s) of evidence you used to verify your questions as unanswered

  • UK Guidelines from the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and relevant professional associations (Association of Breast Surgery [ABS] and British Association of Plastic Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgeons [BAPRAS]
  • High quality recent systematic reviews (Cochrane, Early Breast Cancer Clinical Trialists’ Collaborative Group [EBCTCG] and a targeted PUBMED search)

Please list the sources that you searched in order to identify that evidence

  • UK guidelines including those from the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and the professional surgical associations (Association of Breast Surgery [ABS] and the British Association of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgeons [BAPRAS])
  • The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews
  • Reviews undertaken by the Early Breast Cancer Clinical Trialists’ Collaborative Group (EBCTCG)
  • Targeted PUBMED searches using key words for each summary question to identify recently published systematic reviews and meta-analyses.

What search terms did you use?

Please describe the parameters of the search (eg time limits, excluded sources, country/language) and the rationale for any limitations

Only guidelines or reviews published in English the last 5 years were considered in the evidence check to ensure they reflected the most up-to-date evidence in each area.

Names of individuals who undertook the evidence checking

Katherine Fairhurst, Shelley Potter, Stuart McIntosh

On what date was the question verification process completed?

20/01/2022

Any other relevant information

Not applicable