Interventions to increase the uptake of postpartum diabetes screening among women with previous gestational diabetes: a systematic review and Bayesian network meta-analysis.

OBJECTIVE

This study aimed to summarize the current interventions aimed at improving postpartum diabetes screening attendance and to compare their effectiveness.

DATA SOURCES: Literature searches were conducted in the Web of Science, Embase, Cochrane Library, CINAHL, and PubMed from inception to March 20, 2023.

STUDY ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA: Quantitative studies involving an intervention to increase postpartum diabetes screening attendance among women with gestational diabetes mellitus were included.

METHODS

The Joanna Briggs Institute checklists were used for the quality appraisal of the included studies. A Bayesian network meta-analysis was performed to synthesize the comparative effectiveness of the relevant interventions aimed at improving postpartum diabetes screening rates.

RESULTS

A total of 40 studies were included in this review with pooled data from 17,123 women. Studies included randomized controlled trials (n=11, including 3 US-based studies and 8 non-US-based studies) and nonrandomised studies (n=29, including 13 US-based studies and 16 non-US-based studies). Of the 14 studies that reported screening outcomes, 11 detected early type 2 diabetes at a rate ranging from 2.0% to 23.0%. The types of interventions identified included reminders (eg, postal letters, emails, and phone messages), educational interventions, screening methods and delivery, policy changes, antenatal groups, and multimodal interventions. Based on the network meta-analysis from randomized controlled trials, antenatal group intervention, which refers to antenatal patient education delivered in groups (1 US-based study), had the highest probability to be the most effective intervention (odds ratio, 10; 95% confidence interval, 1.6-77.0), followed by one-to-one educational intervention with written educational materials or counselling (odds ratio, 6.9; 95% confidence interval, 3.6-16.0). The results from nonrandomized studies indicated that flexible screening methods and delivery (2 US-based studies) had the greatest impact on screening uptake (odds ratio, 3.9; 95% confidence interval, 1.8-10.0), followed by educational interventions (1 US-based study and 2 non-US-based studies) with antenatal patient education and written educational materials (odds ratio, 3.4; 95% confidence interval, 1.9-6.3) and antenatal groups (odds ratio, 3.3; 95% confidence interval, 1.7-6.7).

CONCLUSION

The presented evidence suggests that antenatal patient education delivered in groups and offering more flexible screening methods were associated with the greatest increase in attendance. The multimodal interventions and reminders could still be important if they were more theoretically grounded and were more integrated into the healthcare system.