Table 2.

Inclusion and exclusion criteria

Inclusion criteria
Papers reporting on HRQoL from the perspective of the patient and excluding clinician rated measures
Papers including patients diagnosed with GC (on or off treatment) and within or equal to 1 year of treatment. This includes patients with Upper gastro-intestinal tumours (stomach only) or patients with cancer within 2 cm of the esophagogastric junction. This will not include patients with upper gastro-intestinal tumours if they are oesophageal, or duodenum tumours or patients with oesophageal cancer not within 2 cm of the EGJC or where location is not specified, or patients with concurrent disease
This will include studies on patients with different diagnoses alongside GC, as long as HRQoL data for people with GC are reported separately
Papers reporting studies on adult patients aged 18 years and above diagnosed with gastric/stomach cancer
Papers reporting studies involving patients from all countries including East Asia (Japan, South Korea, North Korea China, Taiwan, Mongolia, and Macau)
Papers published between January 2001 and January 2021
Papers published in English Language
Studies including the following designs: 1. Randomised controlled trials
2. Trials of quasi-experimental design (observational, case–control)
3. Qualitative studies
4. Mixed methods
Conference proceedings, theses, protocols, cost-effectiveness studies, studies reporting on animals and those not including primary data (e.g., reviews, case studies, expert opinion, theoretical papers, policy documents, guidelines, consensus, letters, editorials) will be excluded
Relevant grey literature from searches