Updated generic search filters for finding studies of adverse drug effects in Ovid medline and Embase may retrieve up to 90% of relevant studies

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.