The development of search filters for adverse effects of medical devices in medline and embase

Background Objectively derived search filters for adverse drug effects and complications in surgery have been developed but not for medical device adverse effects. Objective To develop and validate search filters to retrieve evidence on medical device adverse effects from ovid medline and embase. Methods We identified systematic reviews from Epistemonikos and the Health Technology Assessment (hta) database. Included studies within these reviews that reported on medical device adverse effects were randomly divided into three test sets and one validation set of records. Using word frequency analysis from one test set, we constructed a sensitivity maximising search strategy. This strategy was refined using two other test sets, then validated. Results From 186 systematic reviews which met our inclusion criteria, 1984 unique included studies were available from medline and 1986 from embase. Generic adverse effects searches in medline and embase achieved 84% and 83% sensitivity. Recall was improved to over 90%, however, when specific adverse effects terms were added. Conclusion We have derived and validated novel search filters that retrieve over 80% of records with medical device adverse effects data in medline and embase. The addition of specific adverse effects terms is required to achieve higher levels of sensitivity.