Abstract
Our efforts to identify published articles describing meta-analyses of clinical trials illustrate the need for standard terminology to facilitate retrieval. We found 119 articles describing meta-analyses and eligible for inclusion in MEDLINE, and yet when we searched MEDLINE, using strategies based on textwords and medical subject headings (MeSH), only 48% of the 119 articles were identified. Sixty-eight (57%) of the 119 articles contained at least one of the terms "meta-analysis", "pooling", or "overview" in the little or abstract. The importance of meta-analyses in the evaluation of medical treatments argues for more disciplined use of a specific term in order to facilitate identification of articles. The fact that the National Library of Medicine has started in 1989 to index articles describing meta-analyses using the MeSH META-ANALYSIS underscores this argument.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 52-66 |
Number of pages | 15 |
Journal | Controlled clinical trials |
Volume | 11 |
Issue number | 1 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Feb 1990 |
Keywords
- MEDLINE
- Meta-analysis
- clinical trials
- clinical trials overview
- pooling of results
- quantitative synthesis
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Pharmacology