Digital Interventions for Promoting Skin Self-Examination Behaviors of Melanoma Survivors: A Systematic Review

Regular and thorough skin self-examination (SSE) is an important strategy to reduce mortality among melanoma survivors. However, less than a quarter of melanoma survivors participate in skin self-examination.

The aim of this study was to systematically review the effectiveness of digital interventions on SSE-related practices in melanoma survivors.

Cochrane Library, Web of Science, PubMed, and EBSCO were used to identify literature with a search period from January 1, 2000, to June 11, 2024. Two researchers conducted the quality evaluation and summarized and analyzed the included literature.

Twelve articles were included, with a quality score of 5-9 and an average score of 7.67 for the included studies. The digital intervention methods are web based (n = 5), mobile applications (n = 5), videos (n = 1), and interactive multimedia (n = 1). Eleven studies used at least 1 theoretical framework to guide their intervention design. Ten studies reported SSE rates, 2 studies reported SSE areas, and 2 studies reported SSE frequencies and other practical effects. Compared with the control group, the increase in SSE rate ranged from 26.2% to 78.9%; 90% of participants had a frequency of SSE ≥ 2 times per month, with an average of 5.14 areas of SSE; the usage rate of mirrors ranged from 67% to 88%.

Digital intervention can effectively improve the rates, frequency, and number of areas of SSE for melanoma survivors.

Digital intervention can be used in clinical practice to provide efficient and effective SSE for melanoma survivors in the short to medium term.