Inclusion and exclusion
criteria
The selection of publications was based on the population, intervention,
comparison, outcome, and study (PICOS) approach.
- Population: Thalassaemia patients were prescribed iron chelation
therapy (ICT). ICT utilisation in patients with comorbidities of
sickle cell disease (SCD), myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) and other
diseases was excluded.
- Types of interventions: Monotherapy or combination of iron chelation
therapy such as desferrioxamine (DFO), deferiprone (DFP), deferasirox
(DFX), DFO& DFP, DFO & DFX and DFX & DFP
- Types of outcome measures: The compliance outcomes in terms of the
rates or percentage. Health outcomes include serum ferritin levels,
MRI T2*, iron overload complications and health-related quality of
life (HRQoL). The outcomes must be reported as comparisons between the
compliant and non-compliant groups. Articles focusing on determinants
of chelation compliance were not included.
- Study design: Study designs included in this review were original
clinical studies, i.e., cross-sectional studies, cohort studies and
randomised controlled trials were included. Only full-text original
articles in English were included. Editorials, expert opinions,
conference abstracts, case studies or series, study protocols or
reviews were excluded.