Volume 61, Issue 4, April 2008, Pages 407–411
Original Article
- Department
of Dermatology, Unit of Evidence Based Medicine (UMBE-UC), School of
Medicine, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Vicuña Mackenna
#4686, Macul, Santiago, Chile
Accepted 28 June 2007, Available online 7 January 2008
Abstract
Background
Systematic
reviews should include as many articles as possible. However, many
systematic reviews use only databases with high English language content
as sources of trials. Literatura Latino Americana e do Caribe em
Ciências da Saúde (LILACS) is an underused source of trials, and there
is not a validated strategy for searching clinical trials to be used in
this database.
Objective
The objective of this study was to develop a sensitive search strategy for clinical trials in LILACS.
Study Design and Setting
An
analytical survey was performed. Several single and multiple-term
search strategies were tested for their ability to retrieve clinical
trials in LILACS. Sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy of each single
and multiple-term strategy were calculated using the results of a
hand-search of 44 Chilean journals as gold standard.
Results
After
combining the most sensitive, specific, and accurate single and
multiple-term search strategy, a strategy with a sensitivity of 97.75%
(95% confidence interval [CI] = 95.98–99.53) and a specificity of 61.85
(95% CI = 61.19–62.51) was obtained.
Conclusions
LILACS
is a source of trials that could improve systematic reviews. A new
highly sensitive search strategy for clinical trials in LILACS has been
developed. It is hoped this search strategy will improve and increase
the utilization of LILACS in future systematic reviews.
Keywords
- Bibliographic databases;
- Information systems;
- Bias;
- Reviews;
- Epidemiologic research design;
- Meta-analysis
Copyright © 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
