Family Practice, Vol 14, 204-208, Copyright © 1997 by World Organization of Family Doctors
T van der Weijden, CJ IJzermans, GJ Dinant, NP van Duijn, R de Vet and F Buntinx
OBJECTIVE: We aimed to examine sensitivity and positive predictive value of
MEDLINE searching for diagnostic studies, relevant for the primary health
care setting. METHOD: Results of MEDLINE searches were compared with a
reference standard collection of studies on two subjects, the diagnostic
value of ESR in discriminating between 'pathology' and 'no pathology', and
the dipstick method in diagnosing urinary tract infections. The main
outcome measures were sensitivity (proportion of the total number of
reference standard diagnostic studies that could be identified by the
search) and positive predictive value (proportion of the total number of
publications retrieved by MEDLINE that were incorporated in the reference
standard). RESULTS: The combined MeSH and freetext search was more
sensitive than MeSH term searching only, for both the ESR and the dipstick
search. With this combined search sensitivities of 0.91 and 0.98 and
predictive values of 0.10 and 0.68 were found for ESR and dipstick
respectively. By restricting the search with keywords describing the
primary health care setting the predictive values increased to 0.72 and
1.00 but sensitivity dropped to 0.10 and 0.07 (ESR and dipstick
respectively). CONCLUSION: Combining freetext and MeSH term searching,
without restriction to the primary health care setting, is a valuable
strategy in systematically searching for available evidence on the value of
a diagnostic test in the scope of a specific disease. The predictive value
seems to depend on the breadth of the disease area. MEDLINE should provide
a term such as 'diagnostic evaluation study' to be used in the limit field
Publication Type to specify diagnostic studies.
ORIGINAL CLINICAL RESEARCH
Identifying relevant diagnostic studies in MEDLINE. The diagnostic value of the erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) and dipstick as an example
Department of General Practice, University of Maastricht, The Netherlands.
CiteULike 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us What's this?
This article has been cited by other articles:
|
|
 |
|
  M. P. Astin, M. G. Brazzelli, C. M. Fraser, C. E. Counsell, G. Needham, and J. M. Grimshaw Developing a Sensitive Search Strategy in MEDLINE to Retrieve Studies on Assessment of the Diagnostic Performance of Imaging Techniques Radiology, May 1, 2008; 247(2): 365 - 373. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 N. L. Wilczynski and R. B. Haynes Optimal Search Strategies for Detecting Clinically Sound Prognostic Studies in EMBASE: An Analytic Survey J. Am. Med. Inform. Assoc., July 1, 2005; 12(4): 481 - 485. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 R B. Haynes and N. L Wilczynski Optimal search strategies for retrieving scientifically strong studies of diagnosis from Medline: analytical survey BMJ, May 1, 2004; 328(7447): 1040. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
|
|
|
|
B. J. Ingui and M. A. M. Rogers Searching for Clinical Prediction Rules in MEDLINE J. Am. Med. Inform. Assoc., July 1, 2001; 8(4): 391 - 397. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 A. A. Verhoeven, E. J Boerma, and B. Meyboom-de Jong Which literature retrieval method is most effective for GPs? Fam. Pract., February 1, 2000; 17(1): 30 - 35. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|