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1.
Background: Research on identifying trials using geographic filters is limited. Objectives:  To test the sensitivity and precision of a filter to identify African randomised controlled trials (RCTs). Methods: We searched medline and embase for RCTs published in 2004 using a Cochrane filter for RCTs. The search was limited to HIV/AIDS but irrespective of location. Two investigators independently identified African RCTs from the retrieved records forming a reference set. We then repeated the search using an African geographic filter comprising country and regional terms forming the filter set. We compared the sensitivity and precision of the sets. Results: The medline reference set comprised 1799 records with 23 African RCTs; for embase , the reference set comprised 763 records with 37 African RCTs. The medline filter set comprised 180 records with 17 African RCTs; the embase filter set comprised 98 records with 27 African RCTs. Sensitivity of the filter was 74% (medline ) and 73% (embase ). Addition of the filter improved precision from 1.3% to 9.4% (medline ) and from 5% to 28% (embase ). Conclusion: The African filter improved precision with some loss in sensitivity. Incomplete reporting of trial location in electronic bibliographic records restricts efficiency of geographic filters. Prospective trial registration should alleviate this.  相似文献   

2.
The performance of adverse effects search filters in MEDLINE and EMBASE   总被引:1,自引:1,他引:0  
Background: Search filters can potentially improve the efficiency of searches involving electronic databases such as medline and embase . Although search filters have been developed for identifying records that contain adverse effects data, little is known about the sensitivity of such filters. Objectives: This study measured the sensitivity of using available adverse effects filters to retrieve papers with adverse effects data. Methods: A total of 233 included studies from 26 systematic reviews of adverse effects were used for analysis. Search filters from medline and embase were tested for their sensitivity in retrieving the records included in these reviews. In addition, the sensitivity of each individual search term used in at least one search filter was measured. Results: Subheadings proved the most useful search terms in both medline and embase . No indexing terms in medline achieved over 12% sensitivity. The sensitivity of published search filters varied in medline from 3% to 93% and in embase from 57% to 97%. Whether this level of sensitivity is acceptable will be dependent on the purpose of the search. Conclusions: Although no adverse effects search filter captured all the relevant records, high sensitivity could be achieved. Search filters may therefore be useful in retrieving adverse effects data.  相似文献   

3.
Background: Romania is a low‐income country of 22 million people and, currently, information regarding mental health research is limited. Romania is one of the last countries in eastern Europe not to have its own bibliographic biomedical database. Aim: To assess the content and quality of Romanian psychiatric research activity over time. Method: embase (1980 to April 2008), medline (1950 to April 2008) and Psyc INFO (1806 to April 2008) were systematically searched for psychiatric articles originating from Romania. The sample from Psyc INFO was described. Results: Psyc INFO was by far the best source of Romanian mental health literature with a considerable increase in the publication activity since 2000 (Psyc INFO identified 3236 hits, medline 549, embase 139). Most papers are in English, but a sizeable minority are in Romanian (30%), French (4%) or Hungarian (4%). The main topics of interest are cognitive processes, creativity, schizophrenia and cognitive development and stress and are, according to Psyc INFO’s indexing, ‘empirical studies’. Seventeen randomised trials were identified with all studies after 2000 being sponsored by industry. Conclusions: Surprisingly, and not in keeping with other studies of the literature of neighbouring countries, Psyc INFO is the major source of psychiatric bibliographic records of this region. There are signs of a resurgence of research activity in Romania and as the number of local mental health workers increases we can expect more output. Industry is now funding evaluative studies in Romania. As everywhere, but perhaps more acutely in situations of severely limited research support, there is a difficult balance to be struck between benefiting support and losing independence.  相似文献   

4.

Background

Degenerative cervical myelopathy (DCM) is a recently proposed umbrella term for symptomatic cervical spinal cord compression secondary to degeneration of the spine. Currently literature searching for DCM is challenged by the inconsistent uptake of the term ‘DCM’ with many overlapping keywords and numerous synonyms.

Objectives

Here, we adapt our previous Ovid medline search filter for the Ovid embase database, to support comprehensive literature searching. Both embase and medline are recommended as a minimum for systematic reviews.

Methods

References contained within embase identified in our prior study formed a ‘development gold standard’ reference database (N = 220). The search filter was adapted for embase and checked against the reference database. The filter was then validated against the ‘validation gold standard’.

Results

A direct translation was not possible, as medline indexing for DCM and the keywords search field were not available in embase . We also used the ‘focus’ function to improve precision. The resulting search filter has 100% sensitivity in testing.

Discussion and Conclusion

We have developed a validated search filter capable of retrieving DCM references in embase with high sensitivity. In the absence of consistent terminology and indexing, this will support more efficient and robust evidence synthesis in the field.  相似文献   

5.
OBJECTIVES: To detect term(s) in the Cochrane Highly Sensitive Search Strategy (HSSS) that retain high sensitivity but improve precision in retrieving reports of trials in the PubMed version of medline. METHODS: Individual terms from the PubMed version of the HSSS were added, term by term, to an African HIV/AIDS strategy to identify reports of trials in medline using PubMed. The titles and abstracts of the records retrieved were read by two handsearchers and checked by a clinical epidemiologist. The sensitivity and precision of each term in the three phases of the HSSS were calculated. RESULTS: Of 7,719 records retrieved, 285 were identified as reports of trials [204 randomized (RCTs); 81 possibly randomized or quasi-randomized (CCTs)]. Phase III had the highest sensitivity (92%). Overall, precision was very low (3.7%). One term, 'random*[tw]', retrieved all RCTs found by our search and improved precision to 29%. The least sensitive terms, yielding no records, were '(doubl* AND mask*)[tw]' and terms containing 'trebl*' or 'tripl*', except for '(tripl* AND blind*)[tw]'. The highest precision per term was for 'Double-blind Method [MeSH]' (76%). CONCLUSIONS: To retrieve all RCTs and CCTs found by our search, seven terms are needed but precision remains low (4.3%). Developments in the methods of search strategy design may help to improve precision while retaining high levels of sensitivity by identifying term(s) which occur frequently in relevant records and are the most efficient at discriminating between different study designs.  相似文献   

6.
The objective of this study was to determine whether a Hungarian language journal of clinical neuroscience, which is not indexed in medline , contains any reports of randomized or quasi‐randomized clinical trials that are not also reported in medline ‐indexed publications. A cover‐to‐cover handsearch was performed of the journal Clinical Neuroscience/Ideggyógyászati Szemle, the official journal of Hungarian societies of neurology, neurosurgery, psychiatry and related clinical neurosciences, from its first volume in 1950 to the end of 1998; and a search of medline for other reports of the trials identified. Clinical trials in which patients were allocated to interventions by randomized, quasi‐randomized or possibly randomized means were identified. Controlled trials were tabulated and coded as randomized controlled trials or controlled clinical trials according to the definitions of the Handsearch Manual of the Cochrane Collaboration. We identified three randomized and eight quasi‐randomized trials. Six of the 11 trials were not reported in medline indexed publications. In conclusion, to obtain a comprehensive controlled trials register, specialized healthcare journals printed in small numbers in the national languages of small countries should be searched.  相似文献   

7.
BACKGROUND: The University of Sofia, Bulgaria, disseminates local biomedical literature (1994 to present) through a free online database, ABS. OBJECTIVES: Our objectives were to systematically search ABS, identify citations to controlled trials and discover what proportion of these studies are to be found on medline. METHODS: We searched using Bulgarian and English phrases; manually selected citations of controlled trials and sought these citations on medline. Results: Using the two languages, we found a total of 628 unique citations, 47 of which seem to be relevant controlled trials (precision 7.48%, 13% of ABS citations were found on medline). The trials in ABS commonly focused on evaluation of care for people with cardiovascular or urological problems. DISCUSSION: ABS is another source of easily accessed trials not readily available elsewhere.  相似文献   

8.
Background: People search medline for trials of healthcare interventions for clinical decisions, or to produce systematic reviews, practice guidelines, or technology assessments. Finding all relevant randomized controlled trials (RCTs) with little extraneous material is challenging. Objective: To provide comparative data on the operating characteristics of search filters designed to retrieve RCTs from medline . Methods: We identified 38 filters. The testing database comprises handsearching data from 161 clinical journals indexed in medline . Sensitivity, specificity and precision were calculated. Results: The number of terms and operating characteristics varied considerably. Comparing the retrieval against the single term ‘randomized controlled trials.pt.’ (sensitivity for retrieving RCTs, 93.7%), 24 of 38 filters had statistically higher sensitivity; 6 had a sensitivity of at least 99.0%. Four other filters had specificities (non retrieval of non‐RCTs) that were statistically not different or better than the single term (97.6%). Precision was poor: only two filters had precision (proportion of retrieved articles that were RCTs) statistically similar to that of the single term (56.4%)—all others were lower. Filters with more search terms often had lower specificity, especially at high sensitivities. Conclusion: Many RCT filters exist (n = 38). These comparative data can direct the choice of an RCT filter.  相似文献   

9.
Background: Access to a comprehensive public health index or database has been identified as problematic for health professionals. Public health literature contains many varied sources including reports, journal articles, and grey literature. Traditional biomedical databases such as medline often do not meet the needs of public health workers and researchers. Aim/Methods: The aim of the study was to examine the unique content of the global health database, by comparing it to the medline database. Pre‐determined terms were used as baseline comparators where controlled vocabulary definitions in each database were sufficiently matched. Retrieved results were stored and compared using EndNote libraries. Results: Results obtained from the terms used in the comparison study protocol suggest that the global health database holds a high proportion of unique records in comparison to medline . The largest overlap of duplicates from the global health database perspective came from the coccidiomycosis results set which contained 70.5% of references retrieved from both databases. Analyzing the results from a medline perspective, the subject with the largest overlap was dengue, with a 43% overlap. Conclusion: The results of this study show that the global health database is complimentary to medline in the subject areas of public health and global health.  相似文献   

10.
OBJECTIVES: To assess the performance of published search filters in finding diagnostic test accuracy studies. METHODS: Diagnostic test accuracy search filters were identified by searching medline, our own files and by requesting unpublished filters from colleagues. We applied the filters to a case study review of diagnostic test accuracy studies for urinary tract infections (UTI) in young children. The included studies with records in medline formed the gold standard. The performance of the filters in finding those gold standard records was assessed. RESULTS: We identified twenty-three diagnostic test accuracy search filters for use with medline. The case study systematic review of UTI included 179 studies of diagnostic test accuracy, of which 160 were available in medline. The filters showed a wide range of sensitivities (range: 20.6% to 86.9%) and precision (range: 1% to 9.4%). CONCLUSIONS: Our results broadly support those reported in two other studies. The search filters tested do not offer an adequate trade-off between sensitivity and precision to be used to identify studies for systematic reviews. However, there are methods available to explore whether search filters are viable based on an objective statistical analysis of the text and indexing used in records.  相似文献   

11.
Background and objective: With the advent of an interprofessional approach to delivering health care in today's health care systems, should health care professionals be educated together? Supported by policy‐making circles worldwide, interprofessional education is accumulating a research literature at an exponential rate. Using one‐word search terms in the medline query box for scoping this body of literature, we obtained an unmanageable number of articles (342 338 in all fields). The objective of our study was to outline an efficient specific query. Methods: We created 1072 phrasal search terms consisting of a prefix, an adjective and a noun. Of those, 66 were prolific for the whole indexed period (1950–2006). Results: Only 2510 citations have the search term in all medline fields; of those 2049 were in title/abstract and 652 in title alone. From the 1950s, the citations were published at a slow rate, but the rate then exploded during the decade 1995 to 2006. The combination of prefixes ‘inter’ and ‘multi’ with the adjectives ‘professional’, ‘disciplinary’ and ‘shared’, and the nouns ‘education’, ‘learning’ and ‘training’ may retrieve almost all the relevant citations, while the terms ‘collaborative’ and ‘common’ may retrieve mainly irrelevant ones. The adjective ‘cohesive’ and nouns ‘practice’ and ‘role’ should be also considered. Conclusion: Phrasal search terms highly increased the relevance of medline ‐retrieved citations.  相似文献   

12.
Our objective was to perform a pilot study to estimate the proportion of published errata linked to randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that are worthwhile obtaining when doing a systematic review. medline was searched for records that had both 'randomized-controlled-trial' in the publication type field and 'erratum' in the comments field. One hundred records from four general medical journals were examined independently from two different perspectives. From the information specialist's perspective, 74% of the errata were considered worthwhile obtaining; these were mainly errors in tables or figures. Another 9% described less serious errors, but were worth obtaining if easily available. The other 17% were minor errors. From the perspective of the experienced reviewer/public health consultant, 5% of errata were classified as likely to affect a meta-analysis, and 10% as having significant errors that would affect the interpretation of the RCT, but no effect on a meta-analysis; 85% were not considered important enough to affect either. About 5% of errata to RCTs appeared to matter in terms of changing the final conclusions of a systematic review. However, the majority of errata were considered to be worthwhile obtaining, on the basis that having full and accurate data can reduce confusion and save reviewers time.  相似文献   

13.

Background

The most current objectively derived search filters for adverse drug effects are 15 years old and other strategies have not been developed and tested empirically.

Objective

To develop and validate search filters to retrieve evidence on adverse drug effects from Ovid medline and Ovid Embase.

Methods

We identified systematic reviews of adverse drug effects in Epistemonikos. From these reviews, we collated their included studies which we then randomly divided into three tests and one validation set of records. We constructed a search strategy to maximise relative recall using word frequency analysis with test set one. This search strategy was then refined using test sets two and three and validated on the final set of records.

Results

Of 107 systematic reviews which met our inclusion criteria, 1948 unique included studies were available from medline and 1980 from Embase. Generic adverse drug effects searches in medline and Embase achieved 90% and 89% relative recall, respectively. When specific adverse effects terms were added recall was improved.

Conclusion

We have derived and validated search filters that retrieve around 90% of records with adverse drug effects data in medline and Embase. The addition of specific adverse effects terms is required to achieve higher recall.  相似文献   

14.
Objectives: National databases may be useful sources in the production of a systematic review (SR). The aim of this study was to assess the potential benefit of a systematic search in the German database ‘Current Contents Medizin’ (CCMed ). Methods: The study was conducted on the basis of published SRs that included CCMed as a literature source. Eligible SRs were identified through a systematic search in medline , embase and The Cochrane Library. The websites of German Health Technology Assessment agencies were also screened. Citations of primary studies included as relevant in the SRs were extracted and then categorised. Results: The search yielded 52 eligible SRs. A total of 1505 relevant citations were extracted. Seventy‐seven of these articles were published in journals indexed in CCMed . Thirty‐two of the 77 citations were indexed in CCMed , but only eight of the 32 were unique. Of these eight citations, seven were not identified by a systematic search, but by handsearching. Only one unique citation, an observational study, was identified in CCMed by a systematic search. Conclusions: In the production of SRs, a systematic search in CCMed identifies relevant studies only in exceptional cases. Therefore, the routine inclusion of this database in systematic searches does not appear meaningful.  相似文献   

15.
OBJECTIVES: The United Arab Emirates is witnessing a rapid development in population and infrastructure, leading to an expansion in the educational field and the health care system, including universities, hospitals and research institutes. One potential outcome of this development is an increase in biomedical research publications. This was examined in this study. METHOD: Searches were made of three databases; PubMed, Current Contents and embase. All records from these databases related to the Emirates were downloaded and cross-referenced. Duplications were removed as well as erroneous records. A total of 1369 publications during 1998-2004 were obtained. RESULTS: Analysis of these records revealed that the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, located at the federal University, was responsible for 48% of all biomedical publications. All hospitals together accounted for 24%, while other universities and other research institutes accounted for 13 and 14% respectively. Further analysis revealed that there had been no further growth in the number of publications since 1998. This is in contrast to the increasing number of institutions that have been set up in the 1998-2004 period; from 29 to 112. CONCLUSION: The Emirates are witnessing a rapid development in universities, colleges, hospitals and research centres. The ratio of publications, as yet, has not kept up with this development. The enormous growth in institutes, however, may, in time, herald an Arabian renaissance in scientific activity and related publications.  相似文献   

16.
Introduction: Locating reports of trials from journals not indexed in the major databases presents difficulties to systematic reviewers, and may be a factor in improving the reliability of the reviews. Objectives: To identify and make available reports of controlled trials from the Australasian Medical Index (AMI). To measure the quality of indexing of trials in AMI. Methods: Using a highly sensitive search strategy consisting of methodology indexing and free‐text terms, records from AMI were read for reports of controlled trials. Trials meeting the criteria were submitted for inclusion in The Cochrane Controlled Trials Register (CCTR) and assessed for the quality of their indexing. Results: 3621 records were downloaded, of which 512 were identified as reports of controlled trials (317 RCTs; 195 CCTs) and submitted to CCTR. The precision of methodology indexing terms was 60%, but sensitivity just 18%. The quality of indexing of trials was generally poor with only 50 tagged with the RCT/CCT publication type term. 453 reports (88%) were not previously available in CCTR. Conclusions: The large proportion of trials found to be unique to the AMI database increases the pool of studies available to systematic reviewers, and helps ensure CCTR remains the most comprehensive source of trials.  相似文献   

17.
Background: Measures of the effectiveness of databases have traditionally focused on recall, precision, with some debate on how relevance can be assessed, and by whom. New measures of database performance are required when users are familiar with search engines, and expect full text availability. Objectives: This research ascertained which of four bibliographic databases (bni, cinahl, medline and embase ) could be considered most useful to nursing and midwifery students searching for information for an undergraduate dissertation. Methods: Searches on title were performed for dissertation topics supplied by nursing students (n = 9), who made the relevance judgements. Measures of recall and precision were combined with additional factors to provide measures of effectiveness, while efficiency combined measures of novelty and originality and accessibility combined measures for availability and retrievability, based on obtainability. Results: There were significant differences among the databases in precision, originality and availability, but other differences were not significant (Friedman test). Odds ratio tests indicated that bni , followed by cinahl were the most effective, cinahl the most efficient, and bni the most accessible. Conclusions: The methodology could help library services in purchase decisions as the measure for accessibility, and odds ratio testing helped to differentiate database performance.  相似文献   

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