Optimizing literature search in systematic reviews - are MEDLINE, EMBASE and CENTRAL enough for identifying effect studies within the area of musculoskeletal disorders?

Ref ID 434
First Author T. Aagaard
Journal BMC MEDICAL RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Year Of Publishing 2016
URL https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5120411/pdf/12874_2016_Article_264.pdf
Keywords • Musculoskeletal
• Searching
• Cochrane
Problem(s) • Lack of supplementary searches beyond databases
Article Type Empirical
Article Subtype Cross-sectional survey/Methodological systematic review
First Author Country Denmark
Aim To assess implementation of the MECIR recommendations to use MEDLINE, EMBASE and CENTRAL combined for reviews published by the Cochrane Musculoskeletal Review Group up to 2013 and to examine the yield of studies retrieved by the database searching.
Level of Investigation Descriptive
Summary of Findings Cumulative median recall for combined searching in MEDLINE, EMBASE and CENTRAL was 88.9% of relevant references, which increased to 90.9% when adding 10 additional databases. It is possible that searching databases is not sufficient to identify all relevant references, and that reviewers must rely upon additional sources in their literature search.
Number of systematic reviews included 23
Number of eligible systematic reviews assessed 164
Treatment impacted No
Treatment impacted description
Interpretation impacted Not Applicable
Interpretation impacted description