Improving Efficacy of PubMed Clinical Queries for Retrieving Scientifically Strong Studies on Treatment

Abstract

The authors evaluated the retrieval power of PubMed "Clinical Queries," narrow search string, about therapy in comparison with a modified search string to avoid possible retrieval bias. PubMed search strategy was compared to a slightly modified string that included the Britannic English term "randomised." The authors tested the two strings joined onto each of four terms concerning topics of broad interest: hypertension, hepatitis, diabetes, and heart failure. In particular, precision was computed for not-indexed citations. The added word "randomised" improved total citation retrieval in any case. Total retrieval gain for not-indexed citations ranged from 11.1% to 21.4%. A significant number of Randomized Controlled Trial(s) (RCT)s (9.1-18.2%) was retrieved for each of the selected topics. They were often recently published RCTs. The authors think that correction of the Clinical Queries filter (when they focus on therapy and use narrow searches) is necessary to avoid biased search results with loss of relevant and up-to-date scientifically sound information.

The impact of radiotherapy on survival in resectable gastric carcinoma: A meta-analysis of literature data

“…24 Retrieval of RCTs was based on the Cochrane Controlled Trials Register, The Cochrane Library, MEDLINE, CANCERLIT and ENBASE, limiting the search to randomised clinical trials and human studies and using the following medical subject headings: gastric carcinoma, radiotherapy, chemotherapy, chemoradiotherapy, randomised or randomised trial 25 and clinical trial. The search included literature published up to December 2006.…”

Assessing the performance of methodological search filters to improve the efficiency of evidence information retrieval: five literature reviews and a qualitative study

“…Twenty-one studies were identified as potentially meeting the inclusion criteria for this review based on titles and abstracts 2,10,14,15,17,19,22,23,25,33,48,49,[55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63] Of these studies, 10 reported the development of one or more search filters, whose performance was then compared against the performance of existing filters 10,14,15,17,19,22,23,25,56,57 and 11 reported the comparative performance of existing filters. 2,33,48,49,55,[58][59][60][61][62][63] On receipt of the full articles, three studies 55,60,62 were excluded from the review based on the criteria outlined in the methods section.…”

“…2,33,48,49,55,[58][59][60][61][62][63] On receipt of the full articles, three studies 55,60,62 were excluded from the review based on the criteria outlined in the methods section. The 18 included studies are listed in Tables 8 and 9 and the excluded studies are listed in Table 10.…”

“…l eight reported the performance of DTA search filters 2,10,14,15,48,49,57,58 l five reported the performance of RCT filters 22,23,25,33,61 l three reported the performance of systematic review filters 17,19,56 l one reported the performance of filters for economic evaluations 59 l one reported the performance of RCT and systematic review filters. 63 The methodological filters evaluated in the included studies had been developed in a variety of interfaces including the interfaces to LILACS, Ovid, PubMed and SilverPlatter.…”

Optimized search strategy for detecting scientifically strong studies on treatment through PubMed

“…Our interest in the optimization of search filters motivated our previous work [11] cited by McKibbon et al Fig. 2 Absolute precision difference pooling analysis: Haynes'search strategies versus a modified search strategy (Random effect model was used for heterogeneity) [12], who, recently, pointed out that our filter has virtually the same sensitivity, specificity, and precision as Haynes' specific filters.…”