as i have seen in searching method of most systematic review studies the authors have used some combination of terms and Mesh terms related to RCT to find RCT studies, while in PubMed You could limit the search results to RCT studies by using Filters, which way is correct?
Hello, I believe there is not a correct or incorrect way to do this. You can choose either options. However, you must describe your chosen option clearly in your methodology section.
You could run both ways and check if you are losing any important papers. Then, you can choose the best one.
Yes, You are right, and some thing that I found is that all papers in Pubmed are not indexed with Mesh term (more surprising! even some articles that have been published in 2015), if we retrieve article by just searchig with Mesh terms we will miss many good Articles, that's why it is better to use the combination
The gold standard for specifying how searches for RCTs should be conducted in MEDLINE/PubMed can be found in the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions. See http://handbook.cochrane.org/. Specifically, see Box 6.4.a and Box 6.4.b. A screenshot of both boxes is attached.
Consulting with a librarian about the search strategy is also recommended.
Hi Ebrahim,
I have preciously done systematic reviews and I always have used a combination of terms and MESH terms. If you know what is your exposure and outcome of interests, is better and more accurate I think, to use the terms or MESH terms than to just use the filters. By including RCT in your search terms, you automatically filter out other type of studies. The key is to use all the possible synonym terms for your exposure and outcome, and to combine the terms is the right way by using "" or () and combination terms AND, OR, NOT. These combination terms have to be in upper case letters. If you use the terms and MESH terms in the correct way, you will not miss relevant publications.
I would suggest you ask the help of a librarian in your faculty. I am also sending a link with a video in youtube that gives step by step how to perform a systematic review and search the electronic databases, including PubMed.
Good luck! :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULC7ICoRkH8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lfiFwcnPtw
Most popular and good method is to make roughly search by using Terms related to ur topic search and run and see the results .
Then you can use AND OR to sum nearly all papers related to ur Search Strategy .
Then do Screening by Exel or Endnote to choose ur criteria.
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