Abstract
Objective To develop and test optimal Medline search strategies for
retrieving sound clinical studies on prevention or treatment of health
disorders. Design Analytical survey. Data sources 161 clinical journals
indexed in Medline for the year 2000. Main outcome measures Sensitivity,
specificity, precision, and accuracy of 4862 unique terms in 18 404
combinations. Results Only 1587 (24.2%) of 6568 articles on treatment
met criteria for testing clinical interventions. Combinations of
search terms reached peak sensitivities of 99.3% (95% confidence
interval 98.7% to 99.8%) at a specificity of 70.4% (69.8% to 70.9%).
Compared with best single terms, best multiple terms increased sensitivity
for sound studies by 4.1% (absolute increase), but with substantial
loss of specificity (absolute difference 23.7%) when sensitivity
was maximised. When terms were combined to maximise specificity,
97.4% (97.3% to 97.6%) was achieved, about the same as that achieved
by the best single term (97.6%, 97.4% to 97.7%). The strategies newly
reported in this paper outperformed other validated search strategies
except for two strategies that had slightly higher specificity (98.1%
and 97.6% v 97.4%) but lower sensitivity (42.0% and 92.8% v 93.1%).
Conclusion New empirical search strategies have been validated to
optimise retrieval from Medline of articles reporting high quality
clinical studies on prevention or treatment of health disorders.
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