Abstract
The research investigated whether conducting a supplementary search of PubMed in addition to the main MEDLINE (Ovid) search for a systematic review is worthwhile and to ascertain whether this PubMed search can be conducted quickly and if it retrieves unique, recently published, and ahead-of-print studies that are subsequently considered for inclusion in the final systematic review. Searches of PubMed were conducted after MEDLINE (Ovid) and MEDLINE In-Process (Ovid) searches had been completed for seven recent reviews. The searches were limited to records not in MEDLINE or MEDLINE In-Process (Ovid). Additional unique records were identified for all of the investigated reviews. Search strategies were adapted quickly to run in PubMed, and reviewer screening of the results was not time consuming. For each of the investigated reviews, studies were ordered for full screening; in six cases, studies retrieved from the supplementary PubMed searches were included in the final systematic review. Supplementary searching of PubMed for studies unavailable elsewhere is worthwhile and improves the currency of the systematic reviews.
Highlights
For each of the investigated reviews, studies were ordered for full screening; in six cases, studies retrieved from the supplementary PubMed searches were included in the final systematic review
Supplementary searching of PubMed for studies unavailable elsewhere is worthwhile and improves the currency of the systematic reviews
MEDLINE content can be searched via several search interfaces, the majority of which are provided by fee-based subscription services (e.g., Ovid, EBSCO, or ProQuest), it can be accessed for free using PubMed
Summary
Searches of PubMed were conducted after MEDLINE (Ovid) and MEDLINE In-Process (Ovid) searches had been completed for seven recent reviews. The searches were limited to records not in MEDLINE or MEDLINE In-Process (Ovid). The authors searched PubMed after MEDLINE (Ovid) and MEDLINE In-Process (Ovid) searches had been completed for seven recent reviews that Kleijnen Systematic Reviews had conducted [6,7,8,9,10,11,12]. It is important to note that, as we were searching for records that were not indexed in MEDLINE, it was not possible to use Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) terms, so only free-text terms could be used. The following line from the original MEDLINE (Ovid) search strategy was replaced with a line of phrases:
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