The optimal approach for retrieving systematic reviews was achieved when searching MEDLINE and Epistemonikos in addition to reference checking: a methodological validation study

被引：0

作者：

Heinen, Lena ^{[1
,2
]}

Goossen, Kaethe ^{[2
]}

Lunny, Carole ^{[3
,4
]}

Hirt, Julian ^{[5
,6
,7
,8
]}

Puljak, Livia ^{[9
]}

Pieper, Dawid ^{[10
,11
]}

机构：

[1] Univ Cologne, Inst Hlth Econ & Clin Epidemiol IGKE, Sch Med, Cologne, Germany

[2] Witten Herdecke Univ, Inst Res Operat Med IFOM, Fac Hlth, Sch Med, Ostmerheimer Str 200, D-51109 Cologne, Germany

[3] Univ British Columbia, Unity Hlth Toronto, Knowledge Translat Program, Vancouver, BC, Canada

[4] Univ British Columbia, St Michaels Hosp, Cochrane Hypertens Review Grp, Vancouver, BC, Canada

[5] Eastern Switzerland Univ Appl Sci, Dept Hlth, St Gallen, Switzerland

[6] Univ Hosp Basel, Res Ctr Clin Neuroimmunol & Neurosci Basel RC2NB, Pragmat Evidence Lab, Basel, Switzerland

[7] Univ Basel, Basel, Switzerland

[8] Martin Luther Univ Halle Wittenberg, Inst Hlth & Nursing Sci, Med Fac, Halle, Germany

[9] Catholic Univ Croatia, Ctr Evidence Based Med & Healthcare, Zagreb, Croatia

[10] Inst Hlth Serv & Hlth Syst Res, Fac Hlth Sci Brandenburg, Brandenburg Med Sch Theodor Fontane, Rudersdorf, Germany

[11] Ctr Hlth Serv Res, Brandenburg Med Sch Theodor Fontane, Rudersdorf, Germany

来源：

BMC MEDICAL RESEARCH METHODOLOGY | 2024年 / 24卷 / 01期

关键词：

Databases; Evidence synthesis; Geographical bias; Information specialist; Overview of review; Review methods; Search strategy; Systematic reviews; Umbrella review;

D O I：

10.1186/s12874-024-02384-2

中图分类号：

R19 [保健组织与事业（卫生事业管理）];

学科分类号：

摘要：

BackgroundSystematic reviews (SRs) are used to inform clinical practice guidelines and healthcare decision making by synthesising the results of primary studies. Efficiently retrieving as many relevant SRs as possible is challenging with a minimum number of databases, as there is currently no guidance on how to do this optimally. In a previous study, we determined which individual databases contain the most SRs, and which combination of databases retrieved the most SRs. In this study, we aimed to validate those previous results by using a different, larger, and more recent set of SRs.MethodsWe obtained a set of 100 Overviews of Reviews that included a total of 2276 SRs. SR inclusion was assessed in MEDLINE, Embase, and Epistemonikos. The mean inclusion rates (% of included SRs) and corresponding 95% confidence intervals were calculated for each database individually, as well as for combinations of MEDLINE with each other database and reference checking. Features of SRs not identified by the best database combination were reviewed qualitatively.ResultsInclusion rates of SRs were similar in all three databases (mean inclusion rates in % with 95% confidence intervals: 94.3 [93.9-94.8] for MEDLINE, 94.4 [94.0-94.9] for Embase, and 94.4 [93.9-94.9] for Epistemonikos). Adding reference checking to MEDLINE increased the inclusion rate to 95.5 [95.1-96.0]. The best combination of two databases plus reference checking consisted of MEDLINE and Epistemonikos (98.1 [97.7-98.5]). Among the 44/2276 SRs not identified by this combination, 34 were published in journals from China, four were other journal publications, three were health agency reports, two were dissertations, and one was a preprint. When discounting the journal publications from China, the SR inclusion rate in the recommended combination (MEDLINE, Epistemonikos and reference checking) was even higher than in the previous study (99.6 vs. 99.2%).ConclusionsA combination of databases and reference checking was the best approach to searching for biomedical SRs. MEDLINE and Epistemonikos, complemented by checking the references of the included studies, was the most efficient and produced the highest recall. However, our results point to the presence of geographical bias, because some publications in journals from China were not identified.Study registrationhttps://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/R5EAS (Open Science Framework).

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