Identifying observational studies of surgical interventions in MEDLINE and EMBASE
Open accessAbstract
BACKGROUND: Health technology assessments of surgical interventions frequently require the inclusion of non-randomised evidence. Literature search strategies employed to identify this evidence often exclude a methodological component because of uncertainty surrounding the use of appropriate search terms. This can result in the retrieval of a large number of irrelevant records. Methodological filters would help to minimise this, making literature searching more efficient. METHODS: An objective approach was employed to develop MEDLINE and EMBASE filters, using a reference standard derived from screening the results of an electronic literature search that contained only subject-related terms. Candidate terms for MEDLINE (N = 37) and EMBASE (N = 35) were derived from examination of the records of the reference standard. The filters were validated on two sets of studies that had been included in previous health technology assessments. RESULTS: The final filters were highly sensitive (MEDLINE 99.5%, EMBASE 100%, MEDLINE/EMBASE combined 100%) with precision ranging between 16.7%-21.1%, specificity 35.3%-43.5%, and a reduction in retrievals of over 30%. Against the validation standards, the individual filters retrieved 85.2%-100% of records. In combination, however, the MEDLINE and EMBASE filters retrieved 100% against both validation standards with a reduction in retrieved records of 28.4% and 30.1% CONCLUSION: The MEDLINE and EMBASE filters were highly sensitive and substantially reduced the number of records retrieved, indicating that they are useful tools for efficient literature searching.
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About one third of the articles acknowledged that searching for observational studies requires additional time and resources because of lack of specific search filters and poorly established or inconsistently used indexing terms.
“About one third of the articles acknowledged that searching for observational studies requires additional time and resources because of lack of specific search filters and poorly established or inconsistently used indexing terms [38, 39, 47, 49, 56, 58, 59, 64, 65].”
From Methods to systematically review and meta-analyse observational studies: a systematic scoping review of recommendations (2018) · cites this paper as [58]
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- Authors
- Fraser, C., Murray, A., & Burr, J.
- Affiliations
- University of Aberdeen (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Fraser, Cynthia
- Venue
- BMC Medical Research Methodology
- Published
- 2006-08-18
- Volume
- 6
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 41-41
- ISSN
- 1471-2288 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC1569861
- OpenAlex
- W2126648016
- Cited by
- 58
- References
- 19
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 1 · 2024: 6 · 2022: 3 · 2021: 6 · 2020: 3 · 2019: 2 · 2018: 2 · 2017: 4 · 2016: 1 · 2015: 1 · 2014: 4 · 2013: 6 · 2012: 4
- FWCI
- 1.90
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- BMC Medical Research Methodology (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Aberdeen University Research Archive (Aberdeen University) (submittedVersion)
- St Andrews Research Repository (St Andrews Research Repository) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty › Meta-analysis and systematic reviews
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Information Retrieval and Search Behavior
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty › scientometrics and bibliometrics research
- Keywords
- observational studies, surgical treatment, health technology assessment, MEDLINE, Embase, search strategy development, search sensitivity and specificity
- MeSH terms
- Efficiency, Humans, Quality Control, Sensitivity and Specificity, Surgical Procedures, Operative, Technology Assessment, Biomedical, Databases, Bibliographic, MEDLINE, Information Storage and Retrieval, Evidence-Based Medicine
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