Optimal literature search for systematic reviews in surgery

Background The aim of the present study was to determine empirically which electronic databases contribute best to a literature search in surgical systematic reviews. Methods For ten published systematic reviews, the systematic literature searches were repeated in the databases MEDLINE, Web of Scien...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Langenbeck's archives of surgery 2018-02, Vol.403 (1), p.119-129
Main Authors: Goossen, Käthe, Tenckhoff, Solveig, Probst, Pascal, Grummich, Kathrin, Mihaljevic, André L., Büchler, Markus W., Diener, Markus K.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Abdominal Surgery
Cardiac Surgery
General Surgery
Medicine
Medicine & Public Health
Original Article
Thoracic Surgery
Traumatic Surgery
Vascular Surgery
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Summary:Background The aim of the present study was to determine empirically which electronic databases contribute best to a literature search in surgical systematic reviews. Methods For ten published systematic reviews, the systematic literature searches were repeated in the databases MEDLINE, Web of Science, CENTRAL, and EMBASE. On the basis of these reviews, a gold standard set of eligible articles was created. Recall (%), precision (%), unique contribution (%), and numbers needed to read (NNR) were calculated for each database, as well as for searches of citing references and of the reference lists of related systematic reviews (hand search). Results CENTRAL yielded the highest recall (88.4%) and precision (8.3%) for randomized controlled trials (RCT), MEDLINE for non-randomized studies (NRS; recall 92.6%, precision 5.2%). The most effective combination of two databases plus hand searching for RCT was MEDLINE/CENTRAL (98.6% recall, NNR 97). Adding EMBASE marginally increased the recall to 99.3%, but with an NNR of 152. For NRS, the most effective combination was MEDLINE/Web of Science (99.5% recall, NNR 60). Conclusions For surgical systematic reviews, the optimal literature search for RCT employs MEDLINE and CENTRAL. For surgical systematic reviews of NRS, Web of Science instead of CENTRAL should be searched. EMBASE does not contribute substantially to reviews with a surgical intervention.
ISSN:1435-2443
1435-2451
DOI:10.1007/s00423-017-1646-x