Development and validation of a sensitive MEDLINE search strategy to identify literature relevant to limb prostheses

Abstract

Background: Researchers and clinicians may find it challenging to identify relevant articles about limb prostheses in online databases. Searches may be improved by using standardized strategies, also known as filters or hedges. Objectives: To develop and validate a highly sensitive MEDLINE (EBSCOHost) search strategy for limb prostheses. Study Design: Search strategy development/validation. Methods: A gold standard (GS) list of peer-reviewed articles on the topic of limb prostheses was created using a relative recall method. This involved identifying and including relevant systematic reviews/meta-analyses and then adding articles that were included in the analysis section of these reviews. Possible terms for the search strategy were identified through brainstorming and exploration of medical subject headings in MEDLINE (MeSH) and standards from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). Concepts were grouped using relevant Boolean operators (e.g. AND and OR) and database record search fields (i.e. MeSH terms, title, and abstract). Part of the GS was used to refine the search strategy and reduce the number of records retrieved in total. The remaining GS set was used to validate and calculate sensitivity of the search strategy. Performance of the search strategy was compared against searches using only relevant MeSH terms. Results: After screening, the final GS totaled 853 records. The developed search strategy was highly sensitive (99.80%) and performed with higher relative recall than searches with relevant MeSH terms. Conclusions: This study provides a highly sensitive search strategy that can be used by clinicians and researchers when searching for relevant literature on limb prostheses in MEDLINE (EBSCOHost).

MeSH and text-word search strategies: precision, recall, and their implications for library instruction

“…Many combinations can accomplish gathering both indexed and nonindexed literature. One strategy is the combination of MeSH and text-words in a singular search [ 35 ], and another is performing two separate searches—one MeSH and one text-word—and then combining the results. If researchers are performing a quick search or only require a singular article for an assignment, then integrating MeSH may not be as important.…”

“…Completeness is never perfect, as it is limited not only by time but also by the sources searched, the quality of the search strategy, as well as any subjective bias in the search strategy or from evaluators. Researchers have used combinations of processes, including hand searching relevant journals, mining systematic reviews, searching multiple databases, searching grey literature, checking cited references, and expert or other qualitative evaluation [ 3 , 19 , 31 , 34 , 35 ]. When a hand search is not practical, some researchers use a method called relative recall [ 31 , 36 , 37 ].…”

Experimenting with Unconditional Basic Income Lessons from the Finnish BI Experiment 2017‐2018, by Olli Kangas, Signe Jauhiainen, Miska Simanainen and Minna Ylikanno. 2021. ISBN: 978‐1‐83910‐484‐8

“…This review focusses on the design of prosthetic sockets which are adjusted manually by the user or clinician, or automatically by the device, with irreversible adaptations, such as cutting components to size, not being classed as adjustable. The search string developed by Nylander et al [18] to identify literature relevant to prosthetics was used as the basis for both the literature and industry searches. The aspects of their search criteria that concentrated on the prosthesis and its design were combined with our additional search terms to define adjustability (Table 1).…”