Improving the quality of systematic reviews of neurological conditions: an assessment of current practice and the development and validation of six new search strategies

Ref ID 257
First Author K. A. Bui
Journal EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF NEUROLOGY
Year Of Publishing 2018
URL https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirect/10.1111/ene.13758?download=true
Keywords Neurology
Searching
Problem(s) Insufficient literature searches
Number of systematic reviews included 182
Summary of Findings 60% of key quality criteria for literature search strategies (PRESS) used in recent systematic reviews of neurological conditions published in 2015-2016 were not met. Over 30% of search strategies relied on a single keyword to identify the neurological condition. The quality of the overall and condition-specific search strategies was not correlated to the impact factor of the publishing journal. The authors highlight that single-term hedges are insensitive for most neurological conditions tested, with the exceptions of migraine and MS. Insensitive search strategies will result in many false negatives during the course of a literature search and the failure to identify potentially important data.
Did the article find that the problem(s) led to qualitative changes in interpretation of the results? Not Applicable
Are the methods of the article described in enough detail to replicate the study? Yes