Clinical risk factors for pancreatic cancer: protocol for an umbrella review

Identifying cancer earlier can help save lives. An increasingly popular approach to diagnosing cancer earlier is in the development of risk prediction models to be applied to the electronic healthcare record of patients. Development of these models requires systematic and thorough identification of the risk factors that might increase an individual's propensity to develop the disease. This protocol sets out the methods for an umbrella review to identify risk factors that might be included in these models. The example used is pancreatic cancer, a disease with a high percentage of late-stage diagnoses and consequent high mortality.

Relevant systematic reviews will be identified through searching of MEDLINE and EMBASE via Ovid and the Science Citation Index Expanded of the Web of Science Core Collection. Screening will be performed by two independent reviewers using Covidence software and the results reported as a Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses flow diagram. Data from eligible studies will be extracted independently by two reviewers and each systematic review will be graded using defined credibility assessment criteria and the ROBIS (Risk of Bias in Systematic Reviews) tool. Results will be presented in detail for each paper. Summary results for each risk factor will be discussed in the narrative and summarised using a table, graphical summary and an infographic.

Ethical approval is not required for this review. Results of the review will be disseminated by publication in a peer-reviewed journal and presented at conferences.

CRD42024526338.