Articlegold2006

Age-Specific Search Strategies for Medline

Monika Kastner · Nancy L Wilczynski · Cindy Walker‐Dilks · Kathleen Ann McKibbon · Brian R Haynes

95 citations0/0 files storedJournal of Medical Internet Research

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Meta-analysis and systematic reviews Information Retrieval and Search Behavior Health Sciences Research and Education

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Many clinicians and researchers are interested in patients of a specific age (childhood, geriatrics, and so on). Searching for age-specific publications in large bibliographic databases such as Medline is problematic because of inconsistencies in indexing, overlapping age categories, and the spread of the relevant literature over many journals. To our knowledge, no empirically tested age-specific search strategies exist for Medline. OBJECTIVE: We sought to determine the retrieval characteristics of age-specific terms in Medline for identifying studies relevant for five clinical specialties: adult medicine, geriatric medicine, pediatric medicine, neonatal medicine, and obstetrics. METHODS: We compared age-specific search terms and phrases for the retrieval of citations in Medline with a manual hand search of the literature for 161 core health care journals. Six experienced research assistants who were trained and intensively calibrated read all issues of 161 journals for the publishing year 2000. In addition to classifying all articles for purpose and quality, study participants' ages were also recorded. Outcome measures were sensitivity, specificity, precision, and accuracy of single and combination search terms. RESULTS: When maximizing sensitivity, the best sensitivity and specificity achieved with combination terms were 98% and 81.2%, respectively, for pediatric medicine, 96.4% and 55.9% for geriatric medicine, 95.3% and 83.6% for neonatal medicine, 94.9% and 64.5% for adult medicine, and 82% and 97.1% for obstetrics. When specificity was maximized, all disciplines had an expected decrease in sensitivity and an increase in precision. Highest values for optimizing best sensitivity and specificity were achieved in neonatal medicine, 92.5% and 92.6%, respectively. CONCLUSION: Selected single terms and combinations of MeSH terms and textwords can reliably retrieve age-specific studies cited in Medline.

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References

1994Developing Optimal Search Strategies for Detecting Clinically Sound Studies in MEDLINE 2004Optimal search strategies for retrieving scientifically strong studies of diagnosis from Medline: analytical survey 2005Optimal search strategies for retrieving scientifically strong studies of treatment from Medline: analytical survey 2004Developing optimal search strategies for detecting clinically sound prognostic studies in MEDLINE: an analytic survey 2002Association of Journal Quality Indicators With Methodological Quality of Clinical Research Articles 2001Enhancing retrieval of best evidence for health care from bibliographic databases: calibration of the hand search of the literature.

Cited by

2020Publication Trends of Pediatric and Adult Randomized Controlled Trials in General Medical Journals, 2005–2018: A Citation Analysis 2011Search filters to identify geriatric medicine in Medline 2018Topic search filters: a systematic scoping review 2020Identifying and understanding the health and social care needs of Indigenous older adults with multiple chronic conditions and their caregivers: a scoping review 2016PRISMA-Children (C) and PRISMA-Protocol for Children (P-C) Extensions: a study protocol for the development of guidelines for the conduct and reporting of systematic reviews and meta-analyses of newborn and child health research

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