Sample records for pubmed medline cochrane

  1. Supplementary searches of PubMed to improve currency of MEDLINE and MEDLINE In-Process searches via Ovid.

    PubMed

    Duffy, Steven; de Kock, Shelley; Misso, Kate; Noake, Caro; Ross, Janine; Stirk, Lisa

    2016-10-01

    The research investigated whether conducting a supplementary search of PubMed in addition to the main MEDLINE (Ovid) search for a systematic review is worthwhile and to ascertain whether this PubMed search can be conducted quickly and if it retrieves unique, recently published, and ahead-of-print studies that are subsequently considered for inclusion in the final systematic review. Searches of PubMed were conducted after MEDLINE (Ovid) and MEDLINE In-Process (Ovid) searches had been completed for seven recent reviews. The searches were limited to records not in MEDLINE or MEDLINE In-Process (Ovid). Additional unique records were identified for all of the investigated reviews. Search strategies were adapted quickly to run in PubMed, and reviewer screening of the results was not time consuming. For each of the investigated reviews, studies were ordered for full screening; in six cases, studies retrieved from the supplementary PubMed searches were included in the final systematic review. Supplementary searching of PubMed for studies unavailable elsewhere is worthwhile and improves the currency of the systematic reviews.

  2. Supplementary searches of PubMed to improve currency of MEDLINE and MEDLINE In-Process searches via Ovid

    PubMed Central

    Duffy, Steven; de Kock, Shelley; Misso, Kate; Noake, Caro; Ross, Janine; Stirk, Lisa

    2016-01-01

    Objective The research investigated whether conducting a supplementary search of PubMed in addition to the main MEDLINE (Ovid) search for a systematic review is worthwhile and to ascertain whether this PubMed search can be conducted quickly and if it retrieves unique, recently published, and ahead-of-print studies that are subsequently considered for inclusion in the final systematic review. Methods Searches of PubMed were conducted after MEDLINE (Ovid) and MEDLINE In-Process (Ovid) searches had been completed for seven recent reviews. The searches were limited to records not in MEDLINE or MEDLINE In-Process (Ovid). Results Additional unique records were identified for all of the investigated reviews. Search strategies were adapted quickly to run in PubMed, and reviewer screening of the results was not time consuming. For each of the investigated reviews, studies were ordered for full screening; in six cases, studies retrieved from the supplementary PubMed searches were included in the final systematic review. Conclusion Supplementary searching of PubMed for studies unavailable elsewhere is worthwhile and improves the currency of the systematic reviews. PMID:27822154

  3. PubMed had a higher sensitivity than Ovid-MEDLINE in the search for systematic reviews.

    PubMed

    Katchamart, Wanruchada; Faulkner, Amy; Feldman, Brian; Tomlinson, George; Bombardier, Claire

    2011-07-01

    To compare the performance of Ovid-MEDLINE vs. PubMed for identifying randomized controlled trials of methotrexate (MTX) in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). We created search strategies for Ovid-MEDLINE and PubMed for a systematic review of MTX in RA. Their performance was evaluated using sensitivity, precision, and number needed to read (NNR). Comparing searches in Ovid-MEDLINE vs. PubMed, PubMed retrieved more citations overall than Ovid-MEDLINE; however, of the 20 citations that met eligibility criteria for the review, Ovid-MEDLINE retrieved 17 and PubMed 18. The sensitivity was 85% for Ovid-MEDLINE vs. 90% for PubMed, whereas the precision and NNR were comparable (precision: 0.881% for Ovid-MEDLINE vs. 0.884% for PubMed and NNR: 114 for Ovid-MEDLINE vs. 113 for PubMed). In systematic reviews of RA, PubMed has higher sensitivity than Ovid-MEDLINE with comparable precision and NNR. This study highlights the importance of well-designed database-specific search strategies. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  4. Do Language Fluency and Other Socioeconomic Factors Influence the Use of PubMed and MedlinePlus?

    PubMed Central

    Sheets, L.; Gavino, A.; Callaghan, F.; Fontelo, P.

    2013-01-01

    Background Increased usage of MedlinePlus by Spanish-speakers was observed after introduction of MedlinePlus in Spanish. This probably reflects increased usage of MEDLINE and PubMed by those with greater fluency in the language in which it is presented; but this has never been demonstrated in English speakers. Evidence that lack of English fluency deters international healthcare personnel from using PubMed could support the use of multi-language search tools like Babel-MeSH. Objectives This study aims to measure the effects of language fluency and other socioeconomic factors on PubMed MEDLINE and MedlinePlus access by international users. Methods We retrospectively reviewed server pageviews of PubMed and MedlinePlus from various periods of time, and analyzed them against country statistics on language fluency, GDP, literacy rate, Internet usage, medical schools, and physicians per capita, to determine whether they were associated. Results We found fluency in English to be positively associated with pageviews of PubMed and MedlinePlus in countries with high literacy rates. Spanish was generally found to be positively associated with pageviews of MedlinePlus en Español. The other parameters also showed varying degrees of association with pageviews. Conclusions After adjusting for the other factors investigated in this study, language fluency was a consistently significant predictor of the use of PubMed, MedlinePlus English and MedlinePlus en Español. This study may support the need for multi-language search tools and may increase access of health information resources from non-English speaking countries. PMID:23874356

  5. Do language fluency and other socioeconomic factors influence the use of PubMed and MedlinePlus?

    PubMed

    Sheets, L; Gavino, A; Callaghan, F; Fontelo, P

    2013-01-01

    Increased usage of MedlinePlus by Spanish-speakers was observed after introduction of MedlinePlus in Spanish. This probably reflects increased usage of MEDLINE and PubMed by those with greater fluency in the language in which it is presented; but this has never been demonstrated in English speakers. Evidence that lack of English fluency deters international healthcare personnel from using PubMed could support the use of multi-language search tools like Babel-MeSH. This study aims to measure the effects of language fluency and other socioeconomic factors on PubMed MEDLINE and MedlinePlus access by international users. We retrospectively reviewed server pageviews of PubMed and MedlinePlus from various periods of time, and analyzed them against country statistics on language fluency, GDP, literacy rate, Internet usage, medical schools, and physicians per capita, to determine whether they were associated. We found fluency in English to be positively associated with pageviews of PubMed and MedlinePlus in countries with high literacy rates. Spanish was generally found to be positively associated with pageviews of MedlinePlus en Español. The other parameters also showed varying degrees of association with pageviews. After adjusting for the other factors investigated in this study, language fluency was a consistently significant predictor of the use of PubMed, MedlinePlus English and MedlinePlus en Español. This study may support the need for multi-language search tools and may increase access of health information resources from non-English speaking countries.

  6. Dialysis search filters for PubMed, Ovid MEDLINE, and Embase databases.

    PubMed

    Iansavichus, Arthur V; Haynes, R Brian; Lee, Christopher W C; Wilczynski, Nancy L; McKibbon, Ann; Shariff, Salimah Z; Blake, Peter G; Lindsay, Robert M; Garg, Amit X

    2012-10-01

    Physicians frequently search bibliographic databases, such as MEDLINE via PubMed, for best evidence for patient care. The objective of this study was to develop and test search filters to help physicians efficiently retrieve literature related to dialysis (hemodialysis or peritoneal dialysis) from all other articles indexed in PubMed, Ovid MEDLINE, and Embase. A diagnostic test assessment framework was used to develop and test robust dialysis filters. The reference standard was a manual review of the full texts of 22,992 articles from 39 journals to determine whether each article contained dialysis information. Next, 1,623,728 unique search filters were developed, and their ability to retrieve relevant articles was evaluated. The high-performance dialysis filters consisted of up to 65 search terms in combination. These terms included the words "dialy" (truncated), "uremic," "catheters," and "renal transplant wait list." These filters reached peak sensitivities of 98.6% and specificities of 98.5%. The filters' performance remained robust in an independent validation subset of articles. These empirically derived and validated high-performance search filters should enable physicians to effectively retrieve dialysis information from PubMed, Ovid MEDLINE, and Embase.

  7. Technical development of PubMed Interact: an improved interface for MEDLINE/PubMed searches

    PubMed Central

    Muin, Michael; Fontelo, Paul

    2006-01-01

    Background The project aims to create an alternative search interface for MEDLINE/PubMed that may provide assistance to the novice user and added convenience to the advanced user. An earlier version of the project was the 'Slider Interface for MEDLINE/PubMed searches' (SLIM) which provided JavaScript slider bars to control search parameters. In this new version, recent developments in Web-based technologies were implemented. These changes may prove to be even more valuable in enhancing user interactivity through client-side manipulation and management of results. Results PubMed Interact is a Web-based MEDLINE/PubMed search application built with HTML, JavaScript and PHP. It is implemented on a Windows Server 2003 with Apache 2.0.52, PHP 4.4.1 and MySQL 4.1.18. PHP scripts provide the backend engine that connects with E-Utilities and parses XML files. JavaScript manages client-side functionalities and converts Web pages into interactive platforms using dynamic HTML (DHTML), Document Object Model (DOM) tree manipulation and Ajax methods. With PubMed Interact, users can limit searches with JavaScript slider bars, preview result counts, delete citations from the list, display and add related articles and create relevance lists. Many interactive features occur at client-side, which allow instant feedback without reloading or refreshing the page resulting in a more efficient user experience. Conclusion PubMed Interact is a highly interactive Web-based search application for MEDLINE/PubMed that explores recent trends in Web technologies like DOM tree manipulation and Ajax. It may become a valuable technical development for online medical search applications. PMID:17083729

  8. Technical development of PubMed interact: an improved interface for MEDLINE/PubMed searches.

    PubMed

    Muin, Michael; Fontelo, Paul

    2006-11-03

    The project aims to create an alternative search interface for MEDLINE/PubMed that may provide assistance to the novice user and added convenience to the advanced user. An earlier version of the project was the 'Slider Interface for MEDLINE/PubMed searches' (SLIM) which provided JavaScript slider bars to control search parameters. In this new version, recent developments in Web-based technologies were implemented. These changes may prove to be even more valuable in enhancing user interactivity through client-side manipulation and management of results. PubMed Interact is a Web-based MEDLINE/PubMed search application built with HTML, JavaScript and PHP. It is implemented on a Windows Server 2003 with Apache 2.0.52, PHP 4.4.1 and MySQL 4.1.18. PHP scripts provide the backend engine that connects with E-Utilities and parses XML files. JavaScript manages client-side functionalities and converts Web pages into interactive platforms using dynamic HTML (DHTML), Document Object Model (DOM) tree manipulation and Ajax methods. With PubMed Interact, users can limit searches with JavaScript slider bars, preview result counts, delete citations from the list, display and add related articles and create relevance lists. Many interactive features occur at client-side, which allow instant feedback without reloading or refreshing the page resulting in a more efficient user experience. PubMed Interact is a highly interactive Web-based search application for MEDLINE/PubMed that explores recent trends in Web technologies like DOM tree manipulation and Ajax. It may become a valuable technical development for online medical search applications.

  9. Agreement between Medline searches using the Medline-CD-Rom and Internet Pubmed, BioMedNet, Medscape and Gateway search-engines.

    PubMed

    Caro-Rojas, Rosa Angela; Eslava-Schmalbach, Javier H

    2005-01-01

    To compare the information obtained from the Medline database using Internet commercial search engines with that obtained from a compact disc (Medline-CD). An agreement study was carried out based on 101 clinical scenarios provided by specialists in internal medicine, pharmacy, gynaecology-obstetrics, surgery and paediatrics. 175 search strategies were employed using the connector AND plus text within quotation marks. The search was limited to 1991-1999. Internet search-engines were selected by common criteria. Identical search strategies were independently applied to and masked from Internet search engines, as well as the Medline-CD. 3,488 articles were obtained using 129 search strategies. Agreement with the Medline-CD was 54% for PubMed, 57% for Gateway, 54% for Medscape and 65% for BioMedNet. The highest agreement rate for a given speciality (paediatrics) was 78.1% for BioMedNet, having greater -/- than +/+ agreement. Even though free access to Medline has encouraged the boom and growth of evidence-based medicine, these results must be considered within the context of which search engine was selected for doing the searches. The Internet search engines studied showed a poor agreement with the Medline-CD, the rate of agreement differing according to speciality, thus significantly affecting searches and their reproducibility. Software designed for conducting Medline database searches, including the Medline-CD, must be standardised and validated.

  10. PubMed Informer: Monitoring MEDLINE/PubMed through E-mail Alerts, SMS, PDA downloads and RSS feeds

    PubMed Central

    Muin, Michael; Fontelo, Paul; Ackerman, Michael

    2005-01-01

    Summary PubMed Informer is a Web-based monitoring tool for topics of interest from MEDLINE/PubMed primarily designed for healthcare professionals. Five tracking methods are available: Web access, e-mail, Short Message Service (SMS), PDA downloads and RSS feeds. PubMed Informer delivers focused search updates and specific information to users with varying information-seeking practices. PMID:16779344

  11. Identifying nurse staffing research in Medline: development and testing of empirically derived search strategies with the PubMed interface

    PubMed Central

    2010-01-01

    Background The identification of health services research in databases such as PubMed/Medline is a cumbersome task. This task becomes even more difficult if the field of interest involves the use of diverse methods and data sources, as is the case with nurse staffing research. This type of research investigates the association between nurse staffing parameters and nursing and patient outcomes. A comprehensively developed search strategy may help identify nurse staffing research in PubMed/Medline. Methods A set of relevant references in PubMed/Medline was identified by means of three systematic reviews. This development set was used to detect candidate free-text and MeSH terms. The frequency of these terms was compared to a random sample from PubMed/Medline in order to identify terms specific to nurse staffing research, which were then used to develop a sensitive, precise and balanced search strategy. To determine their precision, the newly developed search strategies were tested against a) the pool of relevant references extracted from the systematic reviews, b) a reference set identified from an electronic journal screening, and c) a sample from PubMed/Medline. Finally, all newly developed strategies were compared to PubMed's Health Services Research Queries (PubMed's HSR Queries). Results The sensitivities of the newly developed search strategies were almost 100% in all of the three test sets applied; precision ranged from 6.1% to 32.0%. PubMed's HSR queries were less sensitive (83.3% to 88.2%) than the new search strategies. Only minor differences in precision were found (5.0% to 32.0%). Conclusions As with other literature on health services research, nurse staffing studies are difficult to identify in PubMed/Medline. Depending on the purpose of the search, researchers can choose between high sensitivity and retrieval of a large number of references or high precision, i.e. and an increased risk of missing relevant references, respectively. More standardized

  12. Identifying nurse staffing research in Medline: development and testing of empirically derived search strategies with the PubMed interface.

    PubMed

    Simon, Michael; Hausner, Elke; Klaus, Susan F; Dunton, Nancy E

    2010-08-23

    The identification of health services research in databases such as PubMed/Medline is a cumbersome task. This task becomes even more difficult if the field of interest involves the use of diverse methods and data sources, as is the case with nurse staffing research. This type of research investigates the association between nurse staffing parameters and nursing and patient outcomes. A comprehensively developed search strategy may help identify nurse staffing research in PubMed/Medline. A set of relevant references in PubMed/Medline was identified by means of three systematic reviews. This development set was used to detect candidate free-text and MeSH terms. The frequency of these terms was compared to a random sample from PubMed/Medline in order to identify terms specific to nurse staffing research, which were then used to develop a sensitive, precise and balanced search strategy. To determine their precision, the newly developed search strategies were tested against a) the pool of relevant references extracted from the systematic reviews, b) a reference set identified from an electronic journal screening, and c) a sample from PubMed/Medline. Finally, all newly developed strategies were compared to PubMed's Health Services Research Queries (PubMed's HSR Queries). The sensitivities of the newly developed search strategies were almost 100% in all of the three test sets applied; precision ranged from 6.1% to 32.0%. PubMed's HSR queries were less sensitive (83.3% to 88.2%) than the new search strategies. Only minor differences in precision were found (5.0% to 32.0%). As with other literature on health services research, nurse staffing studies are difficult to identify in PubMed/Medline. Depending on the purpose of the search, researchers can choose between high sensitivity and retrieval of a large number of references or high precision, i.e. and an increased risk of missing relevant references, respectively. More standardized terminology (e.g. by consistent use of the

  13. Testing search strategies for systematic reviews in the Medline literature database through PubMed.

    PubMed

    Volpato, Enilze S N; Betini, Marluci; El Dib, Regina

    2014-04-01

    A high-quality electronic search is essential in ensuring accuracy and completeness in retrieved records for the conducting of a systematic review. We analysed the available sample of search strategies to identify the best method for searching in Medline through PubMed, considering the use or not of parenthesis, double quotation marks, truncation and use of a simple search or search history. In our cross-sectional study of search strategies, we selected and analysed the available searches performed during evidence-based medicine classes and in systematic reviews conducted in the Botucatu Medical School, UNESP, Brazil. We analysed 120 search strategies. With regard to the use of phrase searches with parenthesis, there was no difference between the results with and without parenthesis and simple searches or search history tools in 100% of the sample analysed (P = 1.0). The number of results retrieved by the searches analysed was smaller using double quotations marks and using truncation compared with the standard strategy (P = 0.04 and P = 0.08, respectively). There is no need to use phrase-searching parenthesis to retrieve studies; however, we recommend the use of double quotation marks when an investigator attempts to retrieve articles in which a term appears to be exactly the same as what was proposed in the search form. Furthermore, we do not recommend the use of truncation in search strategies in the Medline via PubMed. Although the results of simple searches or search history tools were the same, we recommend using the latter.

  14. High-performance information search filters for acute kidney injury content in PubMed, Ovid Medline and Embase.

    PubMed

    Hildebrand, Ainslie M; Iansavichus, Arthur V; Haynes, R Brian; Wilczynski, Nancy L; Mehta, Ravindra L; Parikh, Chirag R; Garg, Amit X

    2014-04-01

    We frequently fail to identify articles relevant to the subject of acute kidney injury (AKI) when searching the large bibliographic databases such as PubMed, Ovid Medline or Embase. To address this issue, we used computer automation to create information search filters to better identify articles relevant to AKI in these databases. We first manually reviewed a sample of 22 992 full-text articles and used prespecified criteria to determine whether each article contained AKI content or not. In the development phase (two-thirds of the sample), we developed and tested the performance of >1.3-million unique filters. Filters with high sensitivity and high specificity for the identification of AKI articles were then retested in the validation phase (remaining third of the sample). We succeeded in developing and validating high-performance AKI search filters for each bibliographic database with sensitivities and specificities in excess of 90%. Filters optimized for sensitivity reached at least 97.2% sensitivity, and filters optimized for specificity reached at least 99.5% specificity. The filters were complex; for example one PubMed filter included >140 terms used in combination, including 'acute kidney injury', 'tubular necrosis', 'azotemia' and 'ischemic injury'. In proof-of-concept searches, physicians found more articles relevant to topics in AKI with the use of the filters. PubMed, Ovid Medline and Embase can be filtered for articles relevant to AKI in a reliable manner. These high-performance information filters are now available online and can be used to better identify AKI content in large bibliographic databases.

  15. OvidSP Medline-to-PubMed search filter translation: a methodology for extending search filter range to include PubMed's unique content.

    PubMed

    Damarell, Raechel A; Tieman, Jennifer J; Sladek, Ruth M

    2013-07-02

    PubMed translations of OvidSP Medline search filters offer searchers improved ease of access. They may also facilitate access to PubMed's unique content, including citations for the most recently published biomedical evidence. Retrieving this content requires a search strategy comprising natural language terms ('textwords'), rather than Medical Subject Headings (MeSH). We describe a reproducible methodology that uses a validated PubMed search filter translation to create a textword-only strategy to extend retrieval to PubMed's unique heart failure literature. We translated an OvidSP Medline heart failure search filter for PubMed and established version equivalence in terms of indexed literature retrieval. The PubMed version was then run within PubMed to identify citations retrieved by the filter's MeSH terms (Heart failure, Left ventricular dysfunction, and Cardiomyopathy). It was then rerun with the same MeSH terms restricted to searching on title and abstract fields (i.e. as 'textwords'). Citations retrieved by the MeSH search but not the textword search were isolated. Frequency analysis of their titles/abstracts identified natural language alternatives for those MeSH terms that performed less effectively as textwords. These terms were tested in combination to determine the best performing search string for reclaiming this 'lost set'. This string, restricted to searching on PubMed's unique content, was then combined with the validated PubMed translation to extend the filter's performance in this database. The PubMed heart failure filter retrieved 6829 citations. Of these, 834 (12%) failed to be retrieved when MeSH terms were converted to textwords. Frequency analysis of the 834 citations identified five high frequency natural language alternatives that could improve retrieval of this set (cardiac failure, cardiac resynchronization, left ventricular systolic dysfunction, left ventricular diastolic dysfunction, and LV dysfunction). Together these terms reclaimed

  16. All Information Is Not Equal: Using the Literature Databases PubMed and The Cochrane Library for Identifying the Evidence on Granulocyte Transfusion Therapy.

    PubMed

    Metzendorf, Maria-Inti; Schulz, Manuela; Braun, Volker

    2014-10-01

    To be able to take well-informed decisions or carry out sound research, clinicians and researchers alike require specific information seeking skills matching their respective information needs. Biomedical information is traditionally available via different literature databases. This article gives an introduction to two diverging sources, PubMed (23 million references) and The Cochrane Library (800,000 references), both of which offer sophisticated instruments for searching an increasing amount of medical publications of varied quality and ambition. Whereas PubMed as an unfiltered source of primary literature comprises all different kinds of publication types occurring in academic journals, The Cochrane Library is a pre-filtered source which offers access to either synthesized publication types or critically appraised and carefully selected references. A search approach has to be carried out deliberately and requires a good knowledge on the scope and features of the databases as well as on the ability to build a search strategy in a structured way. We present a specific and a sensitive search approach, making use of both databases within two application case scenarios in order to identify the evidence on granulocyte transfusions for infections in adult patients with neutropenia.

  17. All Information Is Not Equal: Using the Literature Databases PubMed and The Cochrane Library for Identifying the Evidence on Granulocyte Transfusion Therapy

    PubMed Central

    Metzendorf, Maria-Inti; Schulz, Manuela; Braun, Volker

    2014-01-01

    Summary To be able to take well-informed decisions or carry out sound research, clinicians and researchers alike require specific information seeking skills matching their respective information needs. Biomedical information is traditionally available via different literature databases. This article gives an introduction to two diverging sources, PubMed (23 million references) and The Cochrane Library (800,000 references), both of which offer sophisticated instruments for searching an increasing amount of medical publications of varied quality and ambition. Whereas PubMed as an unfiltered source of primary literature comprises all different kinds of publication types occurring in academic journals, The Cochrane Library is a pre-filtered source which offers access to either synthesized publication types or critically appraised and carefully selected references. A search approach has to be carried out deliberately and requires a good knowledge on the scope and features of the databases as well as on the ability to build a search strategy in a structured way. We present a specific and a sensitive search approach, making use of both databases within two application case scenarios in order to identify the evidence on granulocyte transfusions for infections in adult patients with neutropenia. PMID:25538539

  18. OvidSP Medline-to-PubMed search filter translation: a methodology for extending search filter range to include PubMed's unique content

    PubMed Central

    2013-01-01

    Background PubMed translations of OvidSP Medline search filters offer searchers improved ease of access. They may also facilitate access to PubMed’s unique content, including citations for the most recently published biomedical evidence. Retrieving this content requires a search strategy comprising natural language terms (‘textwords’), rather than Medical Subject Headings (MeSH). We describe a reproducible methodology that uses a validated PubMed search filter translation to create a textword-only strategy to extend retrieval to PubMed’s unique heart failure literature. Methods We translated an OvidSP Medline heart failure search filter for PubMed and established version equivalence in terms of indexed literature retrieval. The PubMed version was then run within PubMed to identify citations retrieved by the filter’s MeSH terms (Heart failure, Left ventricular dysfunction, and Cardiomyopathy). It was then rerun with the same MeSH terms restricted to searching on title and abstract fields (i.e. as ‘textwords’). Citations retrieved by the MeSH search but not the textword search were isolated. Frequency analysis of their titles/abstracts identified natural language alternatives for those MeSH terms that performed less effectively as textwords. These terms were tested in combination to determine the best performing search string for reclaiming this ‘lost set’. This string, restricted to searching on PubMed’s unique content, was then combined with the validated PubMed translation to extend the filter’s performance in this database. Results The PubMed heart failure filter retrieved 6829 citations. Of these, 834 (12%) failed to be retrieved when MeSH terms were converted to textwords. Frequency analysis of the 834 citations identified five high frequency natural language alternatives that could improve retrieval of this set (cardiac failure, cardiac resynchronization, left ventricular systolic dysfunction, left ventricular diastolic dysfunction, and

  19. A study on PubMed search tag usage pattern: association rule mining of a full-day PubMed query log.

    PubMed

    Mosa, Abu Saleh Mohammad; Yoo, Illhoi

    2013-01-09

    The practice of evidence-based medicine requires efficient biomedical literature search such as PubMed/MEDLINE. Retrieval performance relies highly on the efficient use of search field tags. The purpose of this study was to analyze PubMed log data in order to understand the usage pattern of search tags by the end user in PubMed/MEDLINE search. A PubMed query log file was obtained from the National Library of Medicine containing anonymous user identification, timestamp, and query text. Inconsistent records were removed from the dataset and the search tags were extracted from the query texts. A total of 2,917,159 queries were selected for this study issued by a total of 613,061 users. The analysis of frequent co-occurrences and usage patterns of the search tags was conducted using an association mining algorithm. The percentage of search tag usage was low (11.38% of the total queries) and only 2.95% of queries contained two or more tags. Three out of four users used no search tag and about two-third of them issued less than four queries. Among the queries containing at least one tagged search term, the average number of search tags was almost half of the number of total search terms. Navigational search tags are more frequently used than informational search tags. While no strong association was observed between informational and navigational tags, six (out of 19) informational tags and six (out of 29) navigational tags showed strong associations in PubMed searches. The low percentage of search tag usage implies that PubMed/MEDLINE users do not utilize the features of PubMed/MEDLINE widely or they are not aware of such features or solely depend on the high recall focused query translation by the PubMed's Automatic Term Mapping. The users need further education and interactive search application for effective use of the search tags in order to fulfill their biomedical information needs from PubMed/MEDLINE.

  20. Using data sources beyond PubMed has a modest impact on the results of systematic reviews of therapeutic interventions.

    PubMed

    Halladay, Christopher W; Trikalinos, Thomas A; Schmid, Ian T; Schmid, Christopher H; Dahabreh, Issa J

    2015-09-01

    Searching multiple sources when conducting systematic reviews is considered good practice. We aimed to investigate the impact of using sources beyond PubMed in systematic reviews of therapeutic interventions. We randomly selected 50 Cochrane reviews that searched the PubMed (or MEDLINE) and EMBASE databases and included a meta-analysis of ≥10 studies. We checked whether each eligible record in each review (n = 2,700) was retrievable in PubMed and EMBASE. For the first-listed meta-analysis of ≥10 studies in each review, we examined whether excluding studies not found in PubMed affected results. A median of one record per review was indexed in EMBASE but not in PubMed; a median of four records per review was not indexed in PubMed or EMBASE. Meta-analyses included a median of 13.5 studies; a median of zero studies per meta-analysis was indexed in EMBASE but not in PubMed; a median of one study per meta-analysis was not indexed in PubMed or EMBASE. Meta-analysis using only PubMed-indexed vs. all available studies led to a different conclusion in a single case (on the basis of conventional criteria for statistical significance). In meta-regression analyses, effects in PubMed- vs. non-PubMed-indexed studies were statistically significantly different in a single data set. For systematic reviews of the effects of therapeutic interventions, gains from searching sources beyond PubMed, and from searching EMBASE in particular are modest. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  1. A Study on Pubmed Search Tag Usage Pattern: Association Rule Mining of a Full-day Pubmed Query Log

    PubMed Central

    2013-01-01

    Background The practice of evidence-based medicine requires efficient biomedical literature search such as PubMed/MEDLINE. Retrieval performance relies highly on the efficient use of search field tags. The purpose of this study was to analyze PubMed log data in order to understand the usage pattern of search tags by the end user in PubMed/MEDLINE search. Methods A PubMed query log file was obtained from the National Library of Medicine containing anonymous user identification, timestamp, and query text. Inconsistent records were removed from the dataset and the search tags were extracted from the query texts. A total of 2,917,159 queries were selected for this study issued by a total of 613,061 users. The analysis of frequent co-occurrences and usage patterns of the search tags was conducted using an association mining algorithm. Results The percentage of search tag usage was low (11.38% of the total queries) and only 2.95% of queries contained two or more tags. Three out of four users used no search tag and about two-third of them issued less than four queries. Among the queries containing at least one tagged search term, the average number of search tags was almost half of the number of total search terms. Navigational search tags are more frequently used than informational search tags. While no strong association was observed between informational and navigational tags, six (out of 19) informational tags and six (out of 29) navigational tags showed strong associations in PubMed searches. Conclusions The low percentage of search tag usage implies that PubMed/MEDLINE users do not utilize the features of PubMed/MEDLINE widely or they are not aware of such features or solely depend on the high recall focused query translation by the PubMed’s Automatic Term Mapping. The users need further education and interactive search application for effective use of the search tags in order to fulfill their biomedical information needs from PubMed/MEDLINE. PMID:23302604

  2. Sports medicine clinical trial research publications in academic medical journals between 1996 and 2005: an audit of the PubMed MEDLINE database.

    PubMed

    Nichols, A W

    2008-11-01

    To identify sports medicine-related clinical trial research articles in the PubMed MEDLINE database published between 1996 and 2005 and conduct a review and analysis of topics of research, experimental designs, journals of publication and the internationality of authorships. Sports medicine research is international in scope with improving study methodology and an evolution of topics. Structured review of articles identified in a search of a large electronic medical database. PubMed MEDLINE database. Sports medicine-related clinical research trials published between 1996 and 2005. Review and analysis of articles that meet inclusion criteria. Articles were examined for study topics, research methods, experimental subject characteristics, journal of publication, lead authors and journal countries of origin and language of publication. The search retrieved 414 articles, of which 379 (345 English language and 34 non-English language) met the inclusion criteria. The number of publications increased steadily during the study period. Randomised clinical trials were the most common study type and the "diagnosis, management and treatment of sports-related injuries and conditions" was the most popular study topic. The knee, ankle/foot and shoulder were the most frequent anatomical sites of study. Soccer players and runners were the favourite study subjects. The American Journal of Sports Medicine had the highest number of publications and shared the greatest international diversity of authorships with the British Journal of Sports Medicine. The USA, Australia, Germany and the UK produced a good number of the lead authorships. In all, 91% of articles and 88% of journals were published in English. Sports medicine-related research is internationally diverse, clinical trial publications are increasing and the sophistication of research design may be improving.

  3. MScanner: a classifier for retrieving Medline citations

    PubMed Central

    Poulter, Graham L; Rubin, Daniel L; Altman, Russ B; Seoighe, Cathal

    2008-01-01

    Background Keyword searching through PubMed and other systems is the standard means of retrieving information from Medline. However, ad-hoc retrieval systems do not meet all of the needs of databases that curate information from literature, or of text miners developing a corpus on a topic that has many terms indicative of relevance. Several databases have developed supervised learning methods that operate on a filtered subset of Medline, to classify Medline records so that fewer articles have to be manually reviewed for relevance. A few studies have considered generalisation of Medline classification to operate on the entire Medline database in a non-domain-specific manner, but existing applications lack speed, available implementations, or a means to measure performance in new domains. Results MScanner is an implementation of a Bayesian classifier that provides a simple web interface for submitting a corpus of relevant training examples in the form of PubMed IDs and returning results ranked by decreasing probability of relevance. For maximum speed it uses the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) and journal of publication as a concise document representation, and takes roughly 90 seconds to return results against the 16 million records in Medline. The web interface provides interactive exploration of the results, and cross validated performance evaluation on the relevant input against a random subset of Medline. We describe the classifier implementation, cross validate it on three domain-specific topics, and compare its performance to that of an expert PubMed query for a complex topic. In cross validation on the three sample topics against 100,000 random articles, the classifier achieved excellent separation of relevant and irrelevant article score distributions, ROC areas between 0.97 and 0.99, and averaged precision between 0.69 and 0.92. Conclusion MScanner is an effective non-domain-specific classifier that operates on the entire Medline database, and is suited to

  4. PubMed Interact: an Interactive Search Application for MEDLINE/PubMed

    PubMed Central

    Muin, Michael; Fontelo, Paul; Ackerman, Michael

    2006-01-01

    Online search and retrieval systems are important resources for medical literature research. Progressive Web 2.0 technologies provide opportunities to improve search strategies and user experience. Using PHP, Document Object Model (DOM) manipulation and Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (Ajax), PubMed Interact allows greater functionality so users can refine search parameters with ease and interact with the search results to retrieve and display relevant information and related articles. PMID:17238658

  5. [Evidence-based medicine and 'The Cochrane Collaboration'].

    PubMed

    Kawamura, T; Tamakoshi, A; Wakai, K; Ohno, Y

    1999-06-01

    In Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM), a clinical decision is based neither on pathophysiological theories nor personal experience but on the results derived from scientifically designed clinical epidemiological studies (i.e., evidence). EBM is used in various clinical applications, such as therapy, diagnosis, and prognosis prediction. The process includes (1) asking a clinical question consisting of the three elements of "patient", "exposure", and "outcome"; (2) searching for the best evidence using MEDLINE or Cochrane Library; (3) appraising critically the validity of the method and the magnitude and probability of the result; and finally (4) applying the evidence of the patient. In actual clinical practice, clinical expertise and patient preferences should be as much regarded as research evidence. 'The Cochrane Collaboration' supplies systematic reviews of clinical trials carried out all over the world to its consumers. Its fruit, 'The Cochrane Library (CD-ROM),' is a highly valuable resource. 'The Cochrane Collaboration' serves as the infrastructure for EBM. EBM, which was originally developed for the individual patient care, can also be applicable to community- or workplace-healthcare and policy making by governments. Thus, EBM is both a philosophy and a method to provide people with the most appropriate medical practice.

  6. Evaluation of the Cochrane tool for assessing risk of bias in randomized clinical trials: overview of published comments and analysis of user practice in Cochrane and non-Cochrane reviews.

    PubMed

    Jørgensen, Lars; Paludan-Müller, Asger S; Laursen, David R T; Savović, Jelena; Boutron, Isabelle; Sterne, Jonathan A C; Higgins, Julian P T; Hróbjartsson, Asbjørn

    2016-05-10

    The Cochrane risk of bias tool for randomized clinical trials was introduced in 2008 and has frequently been commented on and used in systematic reviews. We wanted to evaluate the tool by reviewing published comments on its strengths and challenges and by describing and analysing how the tool is applied to both Cochrane and non-Cochrane systematic reviews. A review of published comments (searches in PubMed, The Cochrane Methodology Register and Google Scholar) and an observational study (100 Cochrane and 100 non-Cochrane reviews from 2014). Our review included 68 comments, 15 of which were categorised as major. The main strengths of the tool were considered to be its aim (to assess trial conduct and not reporting), its developmental basis (wide consultation, empirical and theoretical evidence) and its transparent procedures. The challenges of the tool were mainly considered to be its choice of core bias domains (e.g. not involving funding/conflicts of interest) and issues to do with implementation (i.e. modest inter-rater agreement) and terminology. Our observational study found that the tool was used in all Cochrane reviews (100/100) and was the preferred tool in non-Cochrane reviews (31/100). Both types of reviews frequently implemented the tool in non-recommended ways. Most Cochrane reviews planned to use risk of bias assessments as basis for sensitivity analyses (70 %), but only a minority conducted such analyses (19 %) because, in many cases, few trials were assessed as having "low" risk of bias for all standard domains (6 %). The judgement of at least one risk of bias domain as "unclear" was found in 89 % of included randomized clinical trials (1103/1242). The Cochrane tool has become the standard approach to assess risk of bias in randomized clinical trials but is frequently implemented in a non-recommended way. Based on published comments and how it is applied in practice in systematic reviews, the tool may be further improved by a revised structure and

  7. Methods to improve recruitment to randomised controlled trials: Cochrane systematic review and meta-analysis

    PubMed Central

    Treweek, Shaun; Lockhart, Pauline; Pitkethly, Marie; Cook, Jonathan A; Kjeldstrøm, Monica; Johansen, Marit; Taskila, Taina K; Sullivan, Frank M; Wilson, Sue; Jackson, Catherine; Jones, Ritu; Mitchell, Elizabeth D

    2013-01-01

    This review is an abridged version of a Cochrane Review previously published in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2010, Issue 4, Art. No.: MR000013 DOI: 10.1002/14651858.MR000013.pub5 (see www.thecochranelibrary.com for information). Cochrane Reviews are regularly updated as new evidence emerges and in response to feedback, and Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews should be consulted for the most recent version of the review. Objective To identify interventions designed to improve recruitment to randomised controlled trials, and to quantify their effect on trial participation. Design Systematic review. Data sources The Cochrane Methodology Review Group Specialised Register in the Cochrane Library, MEDLINE, EMBASE, ERIC, Science Citation Index, Social Sciences Citation Index, C2-SPECTR, the National Research Register and PubMed. Most searches were undertaken up to 2010; no language restrictions were applied. Study selection Randomised and quasi-randomised controlled trials, including those recruiting to hypothetical studies. Studies on retention strategies, examining ways to increase questionnaire response or evaluating the use of incentives for clinicians were excluded. The study population included any potential trial participant (eg, patient, clinician and member of the public), or individual or group of individuals responsible for trial recruitment (eg, clinicians, researchers and recruitment sites). Two authors independently screened identified studies for eligibility. Results 45 trials with over 43 000 participants were included. Some interventions were effective in increasing recruitment: telephone reminders to non-respondents (risk ratio (RR) 1.66, 95% CI 1.03 to 2.46; two studies, 1058 participants), use of opt-out rather than opt-in procedures for contacting potential participants (RR 1.39, 95% CI 1.06 to 1.84; one study, 152 participants) and open designs where participants know which treatment they are receiving in the trial (RR 1.22, 95

  8. Validation of search filters for identifying pediatric studies in PubMed.

    PubMed

    Leclercq, Edith; Leeflang, Mariska M G; van Dalen, Elvira C; Kremer, Leontien C M

    2013-03-01

    To identify and validate PubMed search filters for retrieving studies including children and to develop a new pediatric search filter for PubMed. We developed 2 different datasets of studies to evaluate the performance of the identified pediatric search filters, expressed in terms of sensitivity, precision, specificity, accuracy, and number needed to read (NNR). An optimal search filter will have a high sensitivity and high precision with a low NNR. In addition to the PubMed Limits: All Child: 0-18 years filter (in May 2012 renamed to PubMed Filter Child: 0-18 years), 6 search filters for identifying studies including children were identified: 3 developed by Kastner et al, 1 developed by BestBets, one by the Child Health Field, and 1 by the Cochrane Childhood Cancer Group. Three search filters (Cochrane Childhood Cancer Group, Child Health Field, and BestBets) had the highest sensitivity (99.3%, 99.5%, and 99.3%, respectively) but a lower precision (64.5%, 68.4%, and 66.6% respectively) compared with the other search filters. Two Kastner search filters had a high precision (93.0% and 93.7%, respectively) but a low sensitivity (58.5% and 44.8%, respectively). They failed to identify many pediatric studies in our datasets. The search terms responsible for false-positive results in the reference dataset were determined. With these data, we developed a new search filter for identifying studies with children in PubMed with an optimal sensitivity (99.5%) and precision (69.0%). Search filters to identify studies including children either have a low sensitivity or a low precision with a high NNR. A new pediatric search filter with a high sensitivity and a low NNR has been developed. Copyright © 2013 Mosby, Inc. All rights reserved.

  9. A comparison of the performance of seven key bibliographic databases in identifying all relevant systematic reviews of interventions for hypertension.

    PubMed

    Rathbone, John; Carter, Matt; Hoffmann, Tammy; Glasziou, Paul

    2016-02-09

    Bibliographic databases are the primary resource for identifying systematic reviews of health care interventions. Reliable retrieval of systematic reviews depends on the scope of indexing used by database providers. Therefore, searching one database may be insufficient, but it is unclear how many need to be searched. We sought to evaluate the performance of seven major bibliographic databases for the identification of systematic reviews for hypertension. We searched seven databases (Cochrane library, Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects (DARE), Excerpta Medica Database (EMBASE), Epistemonikos, Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System Online (MEDLINE), PubMed Health and Turning Research Into Practice (TRIP)) from 2003 to 2015 for systematic reviews of any intervention for hypertension. Citations retrieved were screened for relevance, coded and checked for screening consistency using a fuzzy text matching query. The performance of each database was assessed by calculating its sensitivity, precision, the number of missed reviews and the number of unique records retrieved. Four hundred systematic reviews were identified for inclusion from 11,381 citations retrieved from seven databases. No single database identified all the retrieved systematic reviews for hypertension. EMBASE identified the most reviews (sensitivity 69 %) but also retrieved the most irrelevant citations with 7.2 % precision (Pr). The sensitivity of the Cochrane library was 60 %, DARE 57 %, MEDLINE 57 %, PubMed Health 53 %, Epistemonikos 49 % and TRIP 33 %. EMBASE contained the highest number of unique records (n = 43). The Cochrane library identified seven unique records and had the highest precision (Pr = 30 %), followed by Epistemonikos (n = 2, Pr = 19 %). No unique records were found in PubMed Health (Pr = 24 %) DARE (Pr = 21 %), TRIP (Pr = 10 %) or MEDLINE (Pr = 10 %). Searching EMBASE and the Cochrane library identified 88 % of all systematic reviews in the reference set, and

  10. MEDLINE SDI services: how do they compare?*

    PubMed Central

    Shultz, Mary; De Groote, Sandra L.

    2003-01-01

    Introduction: Selective dissemination of information (SDI) services regularly alert users to new information on their chosen topics. This type of service can increase a user's ability to keep current and may have a positive impact on efficiency and productivity. Currently, there are many venues available where users can establish, store, and automatically run MEDLINE searches. Purpose: To describe, evaluate, and compare SDI services for MEDLINE. Resources: The following SDI services were selected for this study: PubMed Cubby, BioMail, JADE, PubCrawler, OVID, and ScienceDirect. Methodology: Identical searches were established in four of the six selected SDI services and were run on a weekly basis over a period of two months. Eight search strategies were used in each system to test performance under various search conditions. The PubMed Cubby system was used as the baseline against which the other systems were compared. Other aspects were evaluated in all six services and include ease of use, frequency of results, ability to use MeSH, ability to access and edit existing search strategies, and ability to download to a bibliographic management program. Results: Not all MEDLINE SDI services retrieve identical results, even when identical search strategies are used. This study also showed that the services vary in terms of features and functions offered. PMID:14566377

  11. Use of scientific social networking to improve the research strategies of PubMed readers.

    PubMed

    Evdokimov, Pavel; Kudryavtsev, Alexey; Ilgisonis, Ekaterina; Ponomarenko, Elena; Lisitsa, Andrey

    2016-02-18

    Keeping up with journal articles on a daily basis is an important activity of scientists engaged in biomedical research. Usually, journal articles and papers in the field of biomedicine are accessed through the Medline/PubMed electronic library. In the process of navigating PubMed, researchers unknowingly generate user-specific reading profiles that can be shared within a social networking environment. This paper examines the structure of the social networking environment generated by PubMed users. A web browser plugin was developed to map [in Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) terms] the reading patterns of individual PubMed users. We developed a scientific social network based on the personal research profiles of readers of biomedical articles. A browser plugin is used to record the digital object identifier or PubMed ID of web pages. Recorded items are posted on the activity feed and automatically mapped to PubMed abstract. Within the activity feed a user can trace back previously browsed articles and insert comments. By calculating the frequency with which specific MeSH occur, the research interests of PubMed users can be visually represented with a tag cloud. Finally, research profiles can be searched for matches between network users. A social networking environment was created using MeSH terms to map articles accessed through the Medline/PubMed online library system. In-network social communication is supported by the recommendation of articles and by matching users with similar scientific interests. The system is available at http://bioknol.org/en/.

  12. Comparison of PubMed and Google Scholar literature searches.

    PubMed

    Anders, Michael E; Evans, Dennis P

    2010-05-01

    Literature searches are essential to evidence-based respiratory care. To conduct literature searches, respiratory therapists rely on search engines to retrieve information, but there is a dearth of literature on the comparative efficiencies of search engines for researching clinical questions in respiratory care. To compare PubMed and Google Scholar search results for clinical topics in respiratory care to that of a benchmark. We performed literature searches with PubMed and Google Scholar, on 3 clinical topics. In PubMed we used the Clinical Queries search filter. In Google Scholar we used the search filters in the Advanced Scholar Search option. We used the reference list of a related Cochrane Collaboration evidence-based systematic review as the benchmark for each of the search results. We calculated recall (sensitivity) and precision (positive predictive value) with 2 x 2 contingency tables. We compared the results with the chi-square test of independence and Fisher's exact test. PubMed and Google Scholar had similar recall for both overall search results (71% vs 69%) and full-text results (43% vs 51%). PubMed had better precision than Google Scholar for both overall search results (13% vs 0.07%, P < .001) and full-text results (8% vs 0.05%, P < .001). Our results suggest that PubMed searches with the Clinical Queries filter are more precise than with the Advanced Scholar Search in Google Scholar for respiratory care topics. PubMed appears to be more practical to conduct efficient, valid searches for informing evidence-based patient-care protocols, for guiding the care of individual patients, and for educational purposes.

  13. [Limiting a Medline/PubMed query to the "best" articles using the JCR relative impact factor].

    PubMed

    Avillach, P; Kerdelhué, G; Devos, P; Maisonneuve, H; Darmoni, S J

    2014-12-01

    Medline/PubMed is the most frequently used medical bibliographic research database. The aim of this study was to propose a new generic method to limit any Medline/PubMed query based on the relative impact factor and the A & B categories of the SIGAPS score. The entire PubMed corpus was used for the feasibility study, then ten frequent diseases in terms of PubMed indexing and the citations of four Nobel prize winners. The relative impact factor (RIF) was calculated by medical specialty defined in Journal Citation Reports. The two queries, which included all the journals in category A (or A OR B), were added to any Medline/PubMed query as a central point of the feasibility study. Limitation using the SIGAPS category A was larger than the when using the Core Clinical Journals (CCJ): 15.65% of PubMed corpus vs 8.64% for CCJ. The response time of this limit applied to the entire PubMed corpus was less than two seconds. For five diseases out of ten, limiting the citations with the RIF was more effective than with the CCJ. For the four Nobel prize winners, limiting the citations with the RIF was more effective than the CCJ. The feasibility study to apply a new filter based on the relative impact factor on any Medline/PubMed query was positive. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.

  14. Retrieval of diagnostic and treatment studies for clinical use through PubMed and PubMed's Clinical Queries filters.

    PubMed

    Lokker, Cynthia; Haynes, R Brian; Wilczynski, Nancy L; McKibbon, K Ann; Walter, Stephen D

    2011-01-01

    Clinical Queries filters were developed to improve the retrieval of high-quality studies in searches on clinical matters. The study objective was to determine the yield of relevant citations and physician satisfaction while searching for diagnostic and treatment studies using the Clinical Queries page of PubMed compared with searching PubMed without these filters. Forty practicing physicians, presented with standardized treatment and diagnosis questions and one question of their choosing, entered search terms which were processed in a random, blinded fashion through PubMed alone and PubMed Clinical Queries. Participants rated search retrievals for applicability to the question at hand and satisfaction. For treatment, the primary outcome of retrieval of relevant articles was not significantly different between the groups, but a higher proportion of articles from the Clinical Queries searches met methodologic criteria (p=0.049), and more articles were published in core internal medicine journals (p=0.056). For diagnosis, the filtered results returned more relevant articles (p=0.031) and fewer irrelevant articles (overall retrieval less, p=0.023); participants needed to screen fewer articles before arriving at the first relevant citation (p<0.05). Relevance was also influenced by content terms used by participants in searching. Participants varied greatly in their search performance. Clinical Queries filtered searches returned more high-quality studies, though the retrieval of relevant articles was only statistically different between the groups for diagnosis questions. Retrieving clinically important research studies from Medline is a challenging task for physicians. Methodological search filters can improve search retrieval.

  15. Time-dependent migration of citations through PubMed and OvidSP subsets: a study on a series of simultaneous PubMed and OvidSP searches.

    PubMed

    Boeker, Martin; Vach, Werner; Motschall, Edith

    2013-01-01

    To quantitatively describe (1) differences between search results derived at consecutive time points with the PubMed and OvidSP literature search interfaces over a five day interval, and (2) the migration of citations through different subsets to estimate the timeliness of OvidSP. PubMed-Identifiers (PMIDs) of the following subsets were retrieved from PubMed and OvidSP simultaneously (within 8 h) at 11 days in March and April 2010 including 5 consecutive days: as supplied by publisher, in process, PubMed not MEDLINE, and OLDMEDLINE. Search results were compared for difference and intersection sets. The migration of citations on individual level was determined by comparison of corresponding sets over several days. The "in process" set was stable with about 446,000 - 452,000 citations; a small fraction of up to 3 % of the total subsets were in PubMed only and OvidSP only subsets. About 96 % of the ca. 10,500 citations in the OvidSP only subset migrated within 2 days out of the "in process" subset. The database of OvidSP is updated within a period of two days.

  16. [Systematic literature search in PubMed : A short introduction].

    PubMed

    Blümle, A; Lagrèze, W A; Motschall, E

    2018-03-01

    In order to identify current (and relevant) evidence for a specific clinical question within the unmanageable amount of information available, solid skills in performing a systematic literature search are essential. An efficient approach is to search a biomedical database containing relevant literature citations of study reports. The best known database is MEDLINE, which is searchable for free via the PubMed interface. In this article, we explain step by step how to perform a systematic literature search via PubMed by means of an example research question in the field of ophthalmology. First, we demonstrate how to translate the clinical problem into a well-framed and searchable research question, how to identify relevant search terms and how to conduct a text word search and a search with keywords in medical subject headings (MeSH) terms. We then show how to limit the number of search results if the search yields too many irrelevant hits and how to increase the number in the case of too few citations. Finally, we summarize all essential principles that guide a literature search via PubMed.

  17. Understanding PubMed user search behavior through log analysis.

    PubMed

    Islamaj Dogan, Rezarta; Murray, G Craig; Névéol, Aurélie; Lu, Zhiyong

    2009-01-01

    This article reports on a detailed investigation of PubMed users' needs and behavior as a step toward improving biomedical information retrieval. PubMed is providing free service to researchers with access to more than 19 million citations for biomedical articles from MEDLINE and life science journals. It is accessed by millions of users each day. Efficient search tools are crucial for biomedical researchers to keep abreast of the biomedical literature relating to their own research. This study provides insight into PubMed users' needs and their behavior. This investigation was conducted through the analysis of one month of log data, consisting of more than 23 million user sessions and more than 58 million user queries. Multiple aspects of users' interactions with PubMed are characterized in detail with evidence from these logs. Despite having many features in common with general Web searches, biomedical information searches have unique characteristics that are made evident in this study. PubMed users are more persistent in seeking information and they reformulate queries often. The three most frequent types of search are search by author name, search by gene/protein, and search by disease. Use of abbreviation in queries is very frequent. Factors such as result set size influence users' decisions. Analysis of characteristics such as these plays a critical role in identifying users' information needs and their search habits. In turn, such an analysis also provides useful insight for improving biomedical information retrieval.Database URL:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed.

  18. Exploring MEDLINE Space with Random Indexing and Pathfinder Networks

    PubMed Central

    Cohen, Trevor

    2008-01-01

    The integration of disparate research domains is a prerequisite for the success of the translational science initiative. MEDLINE abstracts contain content from a broad range of disciplines, presenting an opportunity for the development of methods able to integrate the knowledge they contain. Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) and related methods learn human-like associations between terms from unannotated text. However, their computational and memory demands limits their ability to address a corpus of this size. Furthermore, visualization methods previously used in conjunction with LSA have limited ability to define the local structure of the associative networks LSA learns. This paper explores these issues by (1) processing the entire MEDLINE corpus using Random Indexing, a variant of LSA, and (2) exploring learned associations using Pathfinder Networks. Meaningful associations are inferred from MEDLINE, including a drug-disease association undetected by PUBMED search. PMID:18999236

  19. Exploring MEDLINE space with random indexing and pathfinder networks.

    PubMed

    Cohen, Trevor

    2008-11-06

    The integration of disparate research domains is a prerequisite for the success of the translational science initiative. MEDLINE abstracts contain content from a broad range of disciplines, presenting an opportunity for the development of methods able to integrate the knowledge they contain. Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) and related methods learn human-like associations between terms from unannotated text. However, their computational and memory demands limits their ability to address a corpus of this size. Furthermore, visualization methods previously used in conjunction with LSA have limited ability to define the local structure of the associative networks LSA learns. This paper explores these issues by (1) processing the entire MEDLINE corpus using Random Indexing, a variant of LSA, and (2) exploring learned associations using Pathfinder Networks. Meaningful associations are inferred from MEDLINE, including a drug-disease association undetected by PUBMED search.

  20. MedlinePlus FAQ: MedlinePlus and MEDLINE/PubMed

    MedlinePlus

    ... What is the difference between MedlinePlus and MEDLINE/PubMed? To use the sharing features on this page, ... latest health professional articles on your topic. MEDLINE/PubMed: Is a database of professional biomedical literature Is ...

  1. Jaquelin Cochran | NREL

    Science.gov Websites

    , R.J. Rudden Associates, Annapolis, Maryland (1996-1997) Featured Publications Palchak, D., Cochran, J Electric Grid. Golden, CO: National Renewable Energy Laboratory. NREL TP-6A20-68530. Cochran, J., P . Cochran, J., M. Miller, O. Zinaman, M. Milligan, D. Arent, B. Palmintier, M. O'Malley, S. Mueller, E

  2. Optimizing literature search in systematic reviews - are MEDLINE, EMBASE and CENTRAL enough for identifying effect studies within the area of musculoskeletal disorders?

    PubMed

    Aagaard, Thomas; Lund, Hans; Juhl, Carsten

    2016-11-22

    When conducting systematic reviews, it is essential to perform a comprehensive literature search to identify all published studies relevant to the specific research question. The Cochrane Collaborations Methodological Expectations of Cochrane Intervention Reviews (MECIR) guidelines state that searching MEDLINE, EMBASE and CENTRAL should be considered mandatory. The aim of this study was to evaluate the MECIR recommendations to use MEDLINE, EMBASE and CENTRAL combined, and examine the yield of using these to find randomized controlled trials (RCTs) within the area of musculoskeletal disorders. Data sources were systematic reviews published by the Cochrane Musculoskeletal Review Group, including at least five RCTs, reporting a search history, searching MEDLINE, EMBASE, CENTRAL, and adding reference- and hand-searching. Additional databases were deemed eligible if they indexed RCTs, were in English and used in more than three of the systematic reviews. Relative recall was calculated as the number of studies identified by the literature search divided by the number of eligible studies i.e. included studies in the individual systematic reviews. Finally, cumulative median recall was calculated for MEDLINE, EMBASE and CENTRAL combined followed by the databases yielding additional studies. Deemed eligible was twenty-three systematic reviews and the databases included other than MEDLINE, EMBASE and CENTRAL was AMED, CINAHL, HealthSTAR, MANTIS, OT-Seeker, PEDro, PsychINFO, SCOPUS, SportDISCUS and Web of Science. Cumulative median recall for combined searching in MEDLINE, EMBASE and CENTRAL was 88.9% and increased to 90.9% when adding 10 additional databases. Searching MEDLINE, EMBASE and CENTRAL was not sufficient for identifying all effect studies on musculoskeletal disorders, but additional ten databases did only increase the median recall by 2%. It is possible that searching databases is not sufficient to identify all relevant references, and that reviewers must rely upon

  3. [Useful tools and methods for literature retrieval in pubmed: step-by-step guide for physicians].

    PubMed

    Hevia M, Joaquín; Huete G, Álvaro; Alfaro F, Sandra; Palominos V, Verónica

    2017-12-01

    Developing skills to search the medical literature has potential benefits on patient care and allow physicians to better orient their efforts when answering daily clinical questions. The objective of this paper is to share useful tools for optimizing medical literature retrieval in MEDLINE using PubMed including MeSH terms, filters and connectors.

  4. Efficient bibliographic searches on allergology using PubMed.

    PubMed

    Sáez Gómez, J M; Aguinaga Ontoso, E; Negro Alvarez, J M; Guillén-Grima, F; Ivancevich, J C; Bozzola, C M

    2007-01-01

    PubMed is the most important of the non-specialized databases on biomedical literature. International and quickly updated is elaborated by the American Government and contains only information about papers published in scientific journal/s. Although it can be used as an unique Data Base, as a matter of fact is the addition of several subgroups (among them MEDLINE) that can be searched simultaneously. To present the main characteristics of PubMed, as well as the most important procedures of search, for obtaining efficient results in searches on allergology. PubMed is elaborated by the American Administration, that condition the character of the registered papers, 90 % of them are written in English in American (50 %) or British (20 %) Journals. Because of this, the information for certain specialties or countries must be obtained from other sources. This paper shows how PubMed allows to search in natural language due to the Automatic Term Mapping that links terms from the natural language with the descriptors producing searches with a higher sensitivity although with a low specificity. Nevertheless the MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) thesaurus allows to translate those terms from the natural language to the equivalent descriptor, as well as to make queries in the PubMed's documental language with a high specificity but with lower sensitivity than the natural language. The use of union (OR), intersection (AND) and exclusion (NOT) operators, as well as tags, such as delimiters of the search fields, allows to increase the specificity of the results. Similar results may be obtained with the use of Limits. Searches done using Clinical Queries are very interesting due to their direct clinical application and because allow to find systematic reviews, metaanalysis or clinically oriented papers (treatment, diagnostic, etiology, prognosis or clinical prediction guides) on the area of interest. Other procedures such as the Index, History of searches, and the widening of the

  5. Internet Medline providers.

    PubMed

    Vine, D L; Coady, T R

    1998-01-01

    Each database in this review has features that will appeal to some users. Each provides a credible interface to information available within the Medline database. The major differences are pricing and interface design. In this context, features that cost more and might seem trivial to the occasional searcher may actually save time and money when used by the professional. Internet Grateful Med is free, but Ms. Coady and I agree the availability of only three ANDable search fields is a major functional limitation. PubMed is also free but much more powerful. The command line interface that permits very sophisticated searches requires a commitment that casual users will find intimidating. Ms. Coady did not believe the feedback currently provided during a search was sufficient for sustained professional use. Paper Chase and Knowledge Finder are mature, modestly priced Medline search services. Paper Chase provides a menu-driven interface that is very easy to use, yet permits the user to search virtually all of Medline's data fields. Knowledge Finder emphasizes the use of natural language queries but fully supports more traditional search strategies. The impact of the tradeoff between fuzzy and Boolean strategies offered by Knowledge Finder is unclear and beyond the scope of this review. Additional software must be downloaded to use all of Knowledge Finders' features. Other providers required no software beyond the basic Internet browser, and this requirement prevented Ms. Coady from evaluating Knowledge Finder. Ovid and Silver Platter offer well-designed interfaces that simplify the construction of complex queries. These are clearly services designed for professional users. While pricing eliminates these for casual use, it should be emphasized that Medline citation access is only a portion of the service provided by these high-end vendors. Finally, we should comment that each of the vendors and government-sponsored services provided prompt and useful feedback to e

  6. Russian translations for Cochrane.

    PubMed

    Yudina, E V; Ziganshina, L E

    2015-01-01

    Cochrane collaboration has made a huge contribution to the development of evidence-based medicine; Cochrane work is the international gold standard of independent, credible and reliable high-quality information in medicine. Over the past 20 years the Cochrane Collaboration helped transforming decision-making in health and reforming it significantly, saving lives and contributing to longevity [1]. Until recently, Cochrane evidence were available only in English, which represents a significant barrier to their wider use in non-English speaking countries. To provide access to evidence, obtained from Cochrane Reviews, for health professionals and general public (from non-English-speaking countries), bypassing language barriers, Cochrane collaboration in 2014 initiated an international project of translating Plain language summaries of Cochrane Reviews into other languages [2, 3]. Russian translations of Plain language summaries were started in May 2014 by the team from Kazan Federal University (Department of Basic and Clinical Pharmacology; 2014-2015 as an Affiliated Centre in Tatarstan of the Nordic Cochrane Centre, since August 2015 as Cochrane Russia, a Russian branch of Cochrane Nordic, Head - Liliya Eugenevna Ziganshina) on a voluntary basis. To assess the quality of Russian translations of Cochrane Plain Language Summaries (PLS) and their potential impact on the Russian speaking community through user feedback with the overarching aim of furthering the translations project. We conducted the continuous online survey via Google Docs. We invited respondents through the electronic Russian language discussion forum on Essential Medicines (E-lek), links to survey on the Russian Cochrane.org website, invitations to Cochrane contributors registered in Archie from potential Russian-speaking countries. We set up the survey in Russian and English. The respondents were asked to respond to the questionnaire regarding the relevance and potential impact of the Cochrane Russian

  7. Two-thirds of methodological research remained unpublished after presentation at Cochrane Colloquia: an empirical analysis.

    PubMed

    Chapman, Sarah; Eisinga, Anne; Hopewell, Sally; Clarke, Mike

    2012-05-01

    To determine the extent to which abstracts of methodology research, initially presented at annual meetings of The Cochrane Collaboration, have been published as full reports and over what period of time. A secondary aim was to explore whether full publication varied in different methodological subject areas. The Cochrane Methodology Register (CMR) was searched for all abstracts reporting methodology research, presented at the 11 Cochrane Colloquia from 1997 to 2007. EMBASE, PubMed, and CMR were searched for full publications of the same research. We identified 908 eligible conference abstracts and found full publications for 312 (34.4%) of these, almost half of which (47.1%) had appeared by the end of the first year after the relevant Colloquium. The proportion of abstracts that had not been published by 3 years was 69.7%, falling to 66.2% at 5 years. Publication varied considerably between different methodological areas. Approximately two-thirds of methodological research studies presented at Cochrane Colloquia remain unpublished as full papers at least 5 years later. This highlights the importance of searching conference abstracts if one wishes to find as comprehensive and complete a sample of methodological research as possible. Crown Copyright © 2012. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  8. Weight change and all-cause mortality in older adults: A meta-analysis

    USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

    This meta-analysis of observational cohort studies examined the association between weight change (weight loss, weight gain, and weight fluctuation) and all-cause mortality among older adults. We used PubMed (MEDLINE), Web of Science, and Cochrane Library to identify prospective studies published in...

  9. MedlinePlus FAQ: Statistics about MedlinePlus

    MedlinePlus

    ... faq/stats.html Can you give me some statistics about MedlinePlus? To use the sharing features on ... For page requests and unique visitors, see MedlinePlus statistics . Return to the list of MedlinePlus FAQs About ...

  10. Enhancing access to reports of randomized trials published world-wide – the contribution of EMBASE records to the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) in The Cochrane Library

    PubMed Central

    Lefebvre, Carol; Eisinga, Anne; McDonald, Steve; Paul, Nina

    2008-01-01

    Background Randomized trials are essential in assessing the effects of healthcare interventions and are a key component in systematic reviews of effectiveness. Searching for reports of randomized trials in databases is problematic due to the absence of appropriate indexing terms until the 1990s and inconsistent application of these indexing terms thereafter. Objectives The objectives of this study are to devise a search strategy for identifying reports of randomized trials in EMBASE which are not already indexed as trials in MEDLINE and to make these reports easily accessible by including them in the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) in The Cochrane Library, with the permission of Elsevier, the publishers of EMBASE. Methods A highly sensitive search strategy was designed for EMBASE based on free-text and thesaurus terms which occurred frequently in the titles, abstracts, EMTREE terms (or some combination of these) of reports of trials indexed in EMBASE. This search strategy was run against EMBASE from 1980 to 2005 (1974 to 2005 for four of the terms) and records retrieved by the search, which were not already indexed as randomized trials in MEDLINE, were downloaded from EMBASE, printed and read. An analysis of the language of publication was conducted for the reports of trials published in 2005 (the most recent year completed at the time of this study). Results Twenty-two search terms were used (including nine which were later rejected due to poor cumulative precision). More than a third of a million records were downloaded and scanned and approximately 80,000 reports of trials were identified which were not already indexed as randomized trials in MEDLINE. These are now easily identifiable in CENTRAL, in The Cochrane Library. Cumulative sensitivity ranged from 0.1% to 60% and cumulative precision ranged from 8% to 61%. The truncated term 'random$' identified 60% of the total number of reports of trials but only 35% of the more than 130

  11. MedlinePlus FAQ: What's the difference between MedlinePlus and MedlinePlus Connect?

    MedlinePlus

    ... MedlinePlus Connect is a free service that allows electronic health record (EHR) systems to easily link users to MedlinePlus, ... updates Subscribe to RSS Follow us Disclaimers Copyright Privacy Accessibility Quality Guidelines Viewers & Players MedlinePlus Connect for ...

  12. A short guide to peer-reviewed, MEDLINE-indexed complementary and alternative medicine journals.

    PubMed

    Morgan, Sherry; Littman, Lynn; Palmer, Christina; Singh, Gurneet; LaRiccia, Patrick J

    2012-01-01

    Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) comprises a multitude of disciplines, for example, acupuncture, ayurvedic medicine, biofeedback, herbal medicine, and homeopathic medicine. While research on CAM interventions has increased and the CAM literature has proliferated since the mid-1990s, a number of our colleagues have expressed difficulties in deciding where to publish CAM articles. In response, we created a short guide to peer-reviewed MEDLINE-indexed journals that publish CAM articles. We examined numerous English-language sources to identify titles that met our criteria, whether specific to or overlapping CAM. A few of the resources in which we found the journal titles that we included are Alternative Medicine Foundation, American Holistic Nurses Association, CINAHL/Nursing Database, Journal Citation Reports database, MEDLINE, PubMed, and Research Council for Complementary Medicine. We organized the 69 selected titles for easy use by creating 2 user-friendly tables, one listing titles in alphabetical order and one listing them in topical categories. A few examples of the topical categories are Acupuncture, CAM (general), Chinese Medicine, Herbal/Plant/Phytotherapy, Neuroscience/Psychology, Nursing/Clinical Care. Our study is the first to list general CAM journals, specialty CAM journals, and overlapping mainstream journals that are peer reviewed, in English, and indexed in MEDLINE. Our goal was to assist both authors seeking publication and mainstream journal editors who receive an overabundance of publishable articles but must recommend that authors seek publication elsewhere due to space and priority issues. Publishing in journals indexed by and included in MEDLINE (or PubMed) ensures that citations to articles will be found easily. Copyright © 2012 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.

  13. Death, dying and informatics: misrepresenting religion on MedLine.

    PubMed

    Rodríguez Del Pozo, Pablo; Fins, Joseph J

    2005-07-01

    The globalization of medical science carries for doctors worldwide a correlative duty to deepen their understanding of patients' cultural contexts and religious backgrounds, in order to satisfy each as a unique individual. To become better informed, practitioners may turn to MedLine, but it is unclear whether the information found there is an accurate representation of culture and religion. To test MedLine's representation of this field, we chose the topic of death and dying in the three major monotheistic religions. We searched MedLine using PubMed in order to retrieve and thematically analyze full-length scholarly journal papers or case reports dealing with religious traditions and end-of-life care. Our search consisted of a string of words that included the most common denominations of the three religions, the standard heading terms used by the National Reference Center for Bioethics Literature (NRCBL), and the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) used by the National Library of Medicine. Eligible articles were limited to English-language papers with an abstract. We found that while a bibliographic search in MedLine on this topic produced instant results and some valuable literature, the aggregate reflected a selection bias. American writers were over-represented given the global prevalence of these religious traditions. Denominationally affiliated authors predominated in representing the Christian traditions. The Islamic tradition was under-represented. MedLine's capability to identify the most current, reliable and accurate information about purely scientific topics should not be assumed to be the same case when considering the interface of religion, culture and end-of-life care.

  14. Death, dying and informatics: misrepresenting religion on MedLine

    PubMed Central

    Rodríguez del Pozo, Pablo; Fins, Joseph J

    2005-01-01

    Background The globalization of medical science carries for doctors worldwide a correlative duty to deepen their understanding of patients' cultural contexts and religious backgrounds, in order to satisfy each as a unique individual. To become better informed, practitioners may turn to MedLine, but it is unclear whether the information found there is an accurate representation of culture and religion. To test MedLine's representation of this field, we chose the topic of death and dying in the three major monotheistic religions. Methods We searched MedLine using PubMed in order to retrieve and thematically analyze full-length scholarly journal papers or case reports dealing with religious traditions and end-of-life care. Our search consisted of a string of words that included the most common denominations of the three religions, the standard heading terms used by the National Reference Center for Bioethics Literature (NRCBL), and the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) used by the National Library of Medicine. Eligible articles were limited to English-language papers with an abstract. Results We found that while a bibliographic search in MedLine on this topic produced instant results and some valuable literature, the aggregate reflected a selection bias. American writers were over-represented given the global prevalence of these religious traditions. Denominationally affiliated authors predominated in representing the Christian traditions. The Islamic tradition was under-represented. Conclusion MedLine's capability to identify the most current, reliable and accurate information about purely scientific topics should not be assumed to be the same case when considering the interface of religion, culture and end-of-life care. PMID:15992401

  15. Physical Activity Measurement Instruments for Children with Cerebral Palsy: A Systematic Review

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Capio, Catherine M.; Sit, Cindy H. P.; Abernethy, Bruce; Rotor, Esmerita R.

    2010-01-01

    Aim: This paper is a systematic review of physical activity measurement instruments for field-based studies involving children with cerebral palsy (CP). Method: Database searches using PubMed Central, MEDLINE, CINAHL Plus, PsycINFO, EMBASE, Cochrane Library, and PEDro located 12 research papers, identifying seven instruments that met the inclusion…

  16. Analysis of PubMed User Sessions Using a Full-Day PubMed Query Log: A Comparison of Experienced and Nonexperienced PubMed Users

    PubMed Central

    2015-01-01

    Background PubMed is the largest biomedical bibliographic information source on the Internet. PubMed has been considered one of the most important and reliable sources of up-to-date health care evidence. Previous studies examined the effects of domain expertise/knowledge on search performance using PubMed. However, very little is known about PubMed users’ knowledge of information retrieval (IR) functions and their usage in query formulation. Objective The purpose of this study was to shed light on how experienced/nonexperienced PubMed users perform their search queries by analyzing a full-day query log. Our hypotheses were that (1) experienced PubMed users who use system functions quickly retrieve relevant documents and (2) nonexperienced PubMed users who do not use them have longer search sessions than experienced users. Methods To test these hypotheses, we analyzed PubMed query log data containing nearly 3 million queries. User sessions were divided into two categories: experienced and nonexperienced. We compared experienced and nonexperienced users per number of sessions, and experienced and nonexperienced user sessions per session length, with a focus on how fast they completed their sessions. Results To test our hypotheses, we measured how successful information retrieval was (at retrieving relevant documents), represented as the decrease rates of experienced and nonexperienced users from a session length of 1 to 2, 3, 4, and 5. The decrease rate (from a session length of 1 to 2) of the experienced users was significantly larger than that of the nonexperienced groups. Conclusions Experienced PubMed users retrieve relevant documents more quickly than nonexperienced PubMed users in terms of session length. PMID:26139516

  17. Cochrane systematic reviews and co-publication: dissemination of evidence on interventions for ophthalmic conditions.

    PubMed

    Wang, Xue; Hawkins, Barbara S; Dickersin, Kay

    2015-09-22

    Systematic reviews of interventions provide a summary of the evidence available on intervention effectiveness and harm. Cochrane systematic reviews (CSRs) have been published electronically in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (CDSR) since 1994, and co-publication (publication of a Cochrane review in another journal) has been allowed since that time, as long as the co-publishing journal has agreed to the arrangement. Although standards for co-publication were established in 2008, the frequency of co-publication and adherence to the standards have remained largely unexamined. Our objective was to examine the frequency of co-publication of Cochrane Eyes and Vision Group (CEVG) reviews, adherence to the co-publication policy, the relative numbers of citations of the two modes of publishing, and differences in times cited in CSRs with and without a co-publication. We identified all CEVG reviews published by May 30, 2014 in The Cochrane Library. Using keywords from the title, author names, and "Cochrane Eyes and Vision Group", we searched Google Scholar, Web of Science, Scopus, and PubMed databases to identify possible co-publications. We also emailed contact authors of all identified CEVG reviews to ask them whether they had published their CSR elsewhere. We compared each co-publication to the corresponding CEVG review for adherence to the Cochrane Policy Manual (dated June 10, 2014). We recorded the number of times each CEVG review and each co-publication had been cited by others according to Google Scholar, Web of Science, and Scopus, as of June 11, 2014. We identified 117 CEVG reviews;19 had been co-published in 22 articles. Adherence to Cochrane policy on co-publication was moderate, with all authors complying with at least one of four requirements we addressed. Co-publications were cited more often than the corresponding CEVG reviews; CEVG reviews with at least one co-publication were cited approximately twice as often as CEVG reviews without a co

  18. Use of CD-ROM MEDLINE by medical students of the College of Medicine, University of Lagos, Nigeria.

    PubMed

    Ogunyade, Taiwo O; Oyibo, Wellington A

    2003-01-01

    Use of information technology in information acquisition, especially MEDLINE on CD-ROM and online, has been evaluated in several localities and regions, especially in the advanced countries. Use of MEDLINE on CD-ROM is still very poor among the medical students of the University of Lagos, Lagos, Nigeria, due to lack of awareness, insufficient personal computers, nonperiodic training, and the high cost of using the facility. Due to financial constraints, MEDLINE online and sufficiently-networked computer systems are not available. To report on the situation in Nigeria, a developing country, so as to compare the current awareness of searching MEDLINE on CD-ROM among the medical students at the University of Lagos with the awareness of their overseas' counterparts. This is the first step toward setting up an online PubMed search as well as expanding the computer systems and network. Essentially based on cross-sectional proportional sampling using structured questionnaires, in-depth interviews, and focus-group discussions among the medical students and library staff. The study involved the medical students in their second year to sixth (final) year of study. Of the 250 students interviewed, 130 (52%) were aware of MEDLINE on CD-ROM searches as a means of information retrieval. Only 60 (24%) had used MEDLINE on CD-ROM-2% had used MEDLINE on CD-ROM more than 9 times; 4%, 7 to 9 times; 8%, 4 to 6 times; and 10%, 1 to 3 times. Of the students who used MEDLINE on CD-ROM search, 22% used it in preparing for examinations, 24% in research, 6% in patient care, and 26% in preparation of assignments and clinical cases. Lack of awareness (52%) and cost of undertaking MEDLINE on CD-ROM search (46%) were identified as important factors that discouraged the use of MEDLINE on CD-ROM. Though the above factors were recognized as important, it was concluded that the reasons for the poor use of MEDLINE on CD-ROM are multifactorial. Poor use of MEDLINE on CD-ROM could be attributed to

  19. The Relationship between Sugar-Containing Methadone and Dental Caries: A Systematic Review

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Tripathee, Sheela; Akbar, Tahira; Richards, Derek; Themessl-Huber, Markus; Freeman, Ruth

    2013-01-01

    Objectives: To review the evidence of a relationship between sugar-containing methadone and dental caries. Data sources: A systematic search of Cochrane Library, PubMed, PsychINFO, EMBASE, MEDLINE, Current Controlled Trials, WHO, OHRN, SIGLE and ERIC databases was conducted from January 1978 up to June 2010. Study selection: Articles were assessed…

  20. GeneView: a comprehensive semantic search engine for PubMed.

    PubMed

    Thomas, Philippe; Starlinger, Johannes; Vowinkel, Alexander; Arzt, Sebastian; Leser, Ulf

    2012-07-01

    Research results are primarily published in scientific literature and curation efforts cannot keep up with the rapid growth of published literature. The plethora of knowledge remains hidden in large text repositories like MEDLINE. Consequently, life scientists have to spend a great amount of time searching for specific information. The enormous ambiguity among most names of biomedical objects such as genes, chemicals and diseases often produces too large and unspecific search results. We present GeneView, a semantic search engine for biomedical knowledge. GeneView is built upon a comprehensively annotated version of PubMed abstracts and openly available PubMed Central full texts. This semi-structured representation of biomedical texts enables a number of features extending classical search engines. For instance, users may search for entities using unique database identifiers or they may rank documents by the number of specific mentions they contain. Annotation is performed by a multitude of state-of-the-art text-mining tools for recognizing mentions from 10 entity classes and for identifying protein-protein interactions. GeneView currently contains annotations for >194 million entities from 10 classes for ∼21 million citations with 271,000 full text bodies. GeneView can be searched at http://bc3.informatik.hu-berlin.de/.

  1. Ensuring relevance for Cochrane reviews: evaluating processes and methods for prioritizing topics for Cochrane reviews.

    PubMed

    Nasser, Mona; Welch, Vivian; Tugwell, Peter; Ueffing, Erin; Doyle, Jodie; Waters, Elizabeth

    2013-05-01

    The purpose of this study was to assess the presence and effectiveness of existing systems of prioritization for Cochrane review topics and to explore methods of improving those systems. We surveyed groups of Cochrane review authors and recorded any evidence of their use of priority-setting processes or policies. To evaluate the effectiveness of the policies we encountered, we assessed them using two frameworks from the literature: "Accountability for Reasonableness" (1) and Sibbald's 2009 framework (2) for successful priority setting. We then held two workshops with the subject groups to discuss our findings and their implications. Of the 66 groups surveyed, 29 had a system in place to inform the selection or prioritization of topics for Cochrane reviews. Fifteen groups used a more comprehensive structured approach that eventually resulted in a list of ranked priority titles for authoring, updating, or disseminating Cochrane reviews. Most groups involved researchers, practitioners, and patients in their prioritization processes. Groups within The Cochrane Collaboration currently use a range of different priority-setting systems, some of which are more detailed than others. These differences often reflect the nature of The Cochrane Collaboration itself: given the topic breadth, history, and variety of international contexts present in the organization, a single unified system would not always be appropriate. All Cochrane entities, however, should have or develop strategic plans to improve the inclusiveness and transparency of their own prioritization processes, increase the number of finished prioritized reviews, and make more effective use of feedback from end users to increase the likelihood of producing reviews that have positive effects on health outcomes. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  2. Effectiveness of psychosocial interventions in eating disorders: an overview of Cochrane systematic reviews

    PubMed Central

    Costa, Marcelle Barrueco; Melnik, Tamara

    2016-01-01

    ABSTRACT Eating disorders are psychiatric conditions originated from and perpetuated by individual, family and sociocultural factors. The psychosocial approach to treatment and prevention of relapse is crucial. To present an overview of the scientific evidence on effectiveness of psychosocial interventions in treatment of eating disorders. All systematic reviews published by the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews - Cochrane Library on the topic were included. Afterwards, as from the least recent date of these reviews (2001), an additional search was conducted at PubMed with sensitive search strategy and with the same keywords used. A total of 101 primary studies and 30 systematic reviews (5 Cochrane systematic reviews), meta-analysis, guidelines or narrative reviews of literature were included. The main outcomes were: symptomatic remission, body image, cognitive distortion, psychiatric comorbidity, psychosocial functioning and patient satisfaction. The cognitive behavioral approach was the most effective treatment, especially for bulimia nervosa, binge eating disorder and the night eating syndrome. For anorexia nervosa, the family approach showed greater effectiveness. Other effective approaches were interpersonal psychotherapy, dialectic behavioral therapy, support therapy and self-help manuals. Moreover, there was an increasing number of preventive and promotional approaches that addressed individual, family and social risk factors, being promising for the development of positive self-image and self-efficacy. Further studies are required to evaluate the impact of multidisciplinary approaches on all eating disorders, as well as the cost-effectiveness of some effective modalities, such as the cognitive behavioral therapy. PMID:27462898

  3. Lida Cochran, Matriarch of Visual Literacy

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Davis, Harry

    2009-01-01

    In this article, the author describes the life and works of Lida Cochran, the matriarch of visual literacy. Lida was practicing "visual literacy" long before there was an association devoted to it. Lida has worked with the AECT, ECT Foundation (the Cochran Internship is named for her husband, Lee Cochran), and the International Visual Literacy…

  4. Research Trend Visualization by MeSH Terms from PubMed.

    PubMed

    Yang, Heyoung; Lee, Hyuck Jai

    2018-05-30

    Motivation : PubMed is a primary source of biomedical information comprising search tool function and the biomedical literature from MEDLINE which is the US National Library of Medicine premier bibliographic database, life science journals and online books. Complimentary tools to PubMed have been developed to help the users search for literature and acquire knowledge. However, these tools are insufficient to overcome the difficulties of the users due to the proliferation of biomedical literature. A new method is needed for searching the knowledge in biomedical field. Methods : A new method is proposed in this study for visualizing the recent research trends based on the retrieved documents corresponding to a search query given by the user. The Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) are used as the primary analytical element. MeSH terms are extracted from the literature and the correlations between them are calculated. A MeSH network, called MeSH Net, is generated as the final result based on the Pathfinder Network algorithm. Results : A case study for the verification of proposed method was carried out on a research area defined by the search query (immunotherapy and cancer and "tumor microenvironment"). The MeSH Net generated by the method is in good agreement with the actual research activities in the research area (immunotherapy). Conclusion : A prototype application generating MeSH Net was developed. The application, which could be used as a "guide map for travelers", allows the users to quickly and easily acquire the knowledge of research trends. Combination of PubMed and MeSH Net is expected to be an effective complementary system for the researchers in biomedical field experiencing difficulties with search and information analysis.

  5. Meta-analysis and The Cochrane Collaboration: 20 years of the Cochrane Statistical Methods Group

    PubMed Central

    2013-01-01

    The Statistical Methods Group has played a pivotal role in The Cochrane Collaboration over the past 20 years. The Statistical Methods Group has determined the direction of statistical methods used within Cochrane reviews, developed guidance for these methods, provided training, and continued to discuss and consider new and controversial issues in meta-analysis. The contribution of Statistical Methods Group members to the meta-analysis literature has been extensive and has helped to shape the wider meta-analysis landscape. In this paper, marking the 20th anniversary of The Cochrane Collaboration, we reflect on the history of the Statistical Methods Group, beginning in 1993 with the identification of aspects of statistical synthesis for which consensus was lacking about the best approach. We highlight some landmark methodological developments that Statistical Methods Group members have contributed to in the field of meta-analysis. We discuss how the Group implements and disseminates statistical methods within The Cochrane Collaboration. Finally, we consider the importance of robust statistical methodology for Cochrane systematic reviews, note research gaps, and reflect on the challenges that the Statistical Methods Group faces in its future direction. PMID:24280020

  6. Precision and negative predictive value of links between ClinicalTrials.gov and PubMed.

    PubMed

    Huser, Vojtech; Cimino, James J

    2012-01-01

    One of the goals of translational science is to shorten the time from discovery to clinical use. Clinical trial registries were established to increase transparency in completed and ongoing clinical trials, and they support linking trials with resulting publications. We set out to investigate precision and negative predictive value (NPV) of links between ClinicalTrials.gov (CT.gov) and PubMed. CT.gov has been established to increase transparency in clinical trials and the link to PubMed is crucial for supporting a number of important functions, including ascertaining publication bias. We drew a random sample of trials downloaded from CT.gov and performed manual review of retrieved publications. We characterize two types of links between trials and publications (NCT-link originating from MEDLINE and PMID-link originating from CT.gov).The link precision is different based on type (NCT-link: 100%; PMID-link: 63% to 96%). In trials with no linked publication, we were able to find publications 44% of the time (NPV=56%) by searching PubMed. This low NPV shows that there are potentially numerous publications that should have been formally linked with the trials. Our results indicate that existing trial registry and publisher policies may not be fully enforced. We suggest some automated methods for improving link quality.

  7. Early Childhood Dental Caries: A Rising Dental Public Health Crisis

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Gomez, Grace Felix

    2013-01-01

    The aim of this article is to examine the literature and review the risk factors and disparities contributing to early childhood caries (ECC), which is a major health problem among preschoolers in the United States of America. A search was conducted using MEDLINE, PubMed, Google Scholar, and the Cochrane Library databases and the key terms…

  8. Chemotext: A Publicly Available Web Server for Mining Drug-Target-Disease Relationships in PubMed.

    PubMed

    Capuzzi, Stephen J; Thornton, Thomas E; Liu, Kammy; Baker, Nancy; Lam, Wai In; O'Banion, Colin P; Muratov, Eugene N; Pozefsky, Diane; Tropsha, Alexander

    2018-02-26

    Elucidation of the mechanistic relationships between drugs, their targets, and diseases is at the core of modern drug discovery research. Thousands of studies relevant to the drug-target-disease (DTD) triangle have been published and annotated in the Medline/PubMed database. Mining this database affords rapid identification of all published studies that confirm connections between vertices of this triangle or enable new inferences of such connections. To this end, we describe the development of Chemotext, a publicly available Web server that mines the entire compendium of published literature in PubMed annotated by Medline Subject Heading (MeSH) terms. The goal of Chemotext is to identify all known DTD relationships and infer missing links between vertices of the DTD triangle. As a proof-of-concept, we show that Chemotext could be instrumental in generating new drug repurposing hypotheses or annotating clinical outcomes pathways for known drugs. The Chemotext Web server is freely available at http://chemotext.mml.unc.edu .

  9. How to improve your PubMed/MEDLINE searches: 3. advanced searching, MeSH and My NCBI.

    PubMed

    Fatehi, Farhad; Gray, Leonard C; Wootton, Richard

    2014-03-01

    Although the basic PubMed search is often helpful, the results may sometimes be non-specific. For more control over the search process you can use the Advanced Search Builder interface. This allows a targeted search in specific fields, with the convenience of being able to select the intended search field from a list. It also provides a history of your previous searches. The search history is useful to develop a complex search query by combining several previous searches using Boolean operators. For indexing the articles in MEDLINE, the NLM uses a controlled vocabulary system called MeSH. This standardised vocabulary solves the problem of authors, researchers and librarians who may use different terms for the same concept. To be efficient in a PubMed search, you should start by identifying the most appropriate MeSH terms and use them in your search where possible. My NCBI is a personal workspace facility available through PubMed and makes it possible to customise the PubMed interface. It provides various capabilities that can enhance your search performance.

  10. Studying PubMed usages in the field for complex problem solving: Implications for tool design

    PubMed Central

    Song, Jean; Tonks, Jennifer Steiner; Meng, Fan; Xuan, Weijian; Ameziane, Rafiqa

    2012-01-01

    Many recent studies on MEDLINE-based information seeking have shed light on scientists’ behaviors and associated tool innovations that may improve efficiency and effectiveness. Few if any studies, however, examine scientists’ problem-solving uses of PubMed in actual contexts of work and corresponding needs for better tool support. Addressing this gap, we conducted a field study of novice scientists (14 upper level undergraduate majors in molecular biology) as they engaged in a problem solving activity with PubMed in a laboratory setting. Findings reveal many common stages and patterns of information seeking across users as well as variations, especially variations in cognitive search styles. Based on findings, we suggest tool improvements that both confirm and qualify many results found in other recent studies. Our findings highlight the need to use results from context-rich studies to inform decisions in tool design about when to offer improved features to users. PMID:24376375

  11. Does antibiotic prophylaxis at implant placement decrease early implant failures? A Cochrane systematic review.

    PubMed

    Esposito, Marco; Grusovin, Maria Gabriella; Loli, Vasiliki; Coulthard, Paul; Worthington, Helen V

    2010-01-01

    Marco Esposito is the first author of two of the included studies; however, he was not involved in the quality assessment of these trials. This review is based on a Cochrane systematic review entitled 'Interventions for replacing missing teeth: antibiotics at dental implant placement to prevent complications' published in The Cochrane Library (see http://www.cochrane.org for more information). Cochrane systematic reviews are regularly updated to include new research, and in response to comments and criticisms from readers. If you wish to comment on this review, please send your comments to the Cochrane website or to Marco Esposito. The Cochrane Library should be consulted for the most recent version of the review. The results of a Cochrane Review can be interpreted differently, depending on people's perspectives and circumstances. Please consider the conclusions presented carefully. They are the opinions of the review authors, and are not necessarily shared by the Cochrane Collaboration. To assess the beneficial or harmful effects of systemic prophylactic antibiotics at dental implant placement versus no antibiotic/placebo administration and, if antibiotics are of benefit, to find which type, dosage and duration is the most effective. The Cochrane Oral Health Group's Trials Register, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), MEDLINE and EMBASE were searched up to 2 June 2010 for randomised controlled clinical trials (RCTs) with a follow-up of at least 3 months comparing the administration of various prophylactic antibiotic regimens versus no antibiotics to patients undergoing dental implant placement. Outcome measures were prosthesis failures, implant failures, postoperative infections and adverse events (gastrointestinal, hypersensitivity, etc.). Screening of eligible studies, assessment of the methodological quality of the trials and data extraction were conducted in duplicate and independently by two review authors. Meta-analyses were

  12. Acta Informatica Medica Is Indexed In Pubmed And Archived In Pubmed Central

    PubMed Central

    Masic, Izet

    2013-01-01

    Acta Informatica Medica journal has been accepted for archiving in PubMed Central from 2011 onward. The journal started in 1993 as the official journal of the Society for Medical Informatics of Bosnia and Herzegovina. During the last 3 years, Acta Informatica Medica has een included in almost all prestigious online databases, including PubMed, Scopus and EMBASE. The 20th volume of the journal is fully international, with papers from 18 countries. PMID:23572852

  13. Acta informatica medica is indexed in pubmed and archived in pubmed central.

    PubMed

    Masic, Izet

    2013-03-01

    Acta Informatica Medica journal has been accepted for archiving in PubMed Central from 2011 onward. The journal started in 1993 as the official journal of the Society for Medical Informatics of Bosnia and Herzegovina. During the last 3 years, Acta Informatica Medica has een included in almost all prestigious online databases, including PubMed, Scopus and EMBASE. The 20th volume of the journal is fully international, with papers from 18 countries.

  14. Intermittent catheterisation for long-term bladder management (abridged cochrane review).

    PubMed

    Prieto, Jacqui A; Murphy, Catherine; Moore, Katherine N; Fader, Mandy J

    2015-09-01

    To review the evidence on strategies to reduce UTI, other complications or improve satisfaction in intermittent catheter (IC) users by comparing: (1) one catheter design, material or technique versus another; (2) sterile technique versus clean; or (3) single-use (sterile) or multiple-use (clean) catheters. We searched Cochrane Incontinence Group Specialised Trials Register, MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, ERIC, reference lists, and conference proceedings to November 2013. We contacted other investigators for unpublished data or clarification. Trial screening, assessment and data abstraction were all in accordance with the Cochrane handbook. Thirty one trials (13 RCTs and 18 randomized crossover trials), addressed the inclusion criteria comparing method or design and UTI/bacteriuria, other complications or participant assessed outcomes. Studies varied widely in follow-up, UTI definition and attrition; in some, data could not be combined. Where there were data, confidence intervals were wide and hence clinically important differences could neither be reliably identified nor ruled out. Current research evidence is weak and design issues are significant. It has not yet been established whether incidence of UTI, other complications such as haematuria, or user satisfaction are affected by sterile or clean technique, coated or uncoated catheters, single or multiple-use catheters or by any other strategy. For people using IC, choice of catheter will depend on personal preference, cost, portability, and ease of use. Individuals should discuss the catheter options with their healthcare practitioner. Cost-effectiveness analysis and use of the standard definition of UTI are essential in any proposed clinical trial. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

  15. Universal alcohol misuse prevention programmes for children and adolescents: Cochrane systematic reviews.

    PubMed

    Foxcroft, David R; Tsertsvadze, Alexander

    2012-05-01

    Alcohol misuse by young people causes significant health and social harm, including death and disability. Therefore, prevention of youth alcohol misuse is a policy aim in many countries. Our aim was to examine the effectiveness of (1) school-based, (2) family-based and (3) multi-component universal alcohol misuse prevention programmes in children and adolescents. Three Cochrane systematic reviews were performed: searches in MEDLINE, EMBASE, PsycINFO, Project CORK and the Cochrane Register of Controlled Trials up to July 2010, including randomised trials evaluating universal alcohol misuse prevention programmes in school, family or multiple settings in youths aged 18 years or younger. Two independent reviewers identified eligible studies and any discrepancies were resolved via discussion. A total of 85 trials were included in the reviews of school (n = 53), family (n = 12) and multi-component (n = 20) programmes. Meta-analysis was not performed due to study heterogeneity. Most studies were conducted in North America. Risk of bias assessment revealed problems related to inappropriate unit of analysis, moderate to high attrition, selective outcome reporting and potential confounding. Certain generic psychosocial and life skills school-based programmes were effective in reducing alcohol use in youth. Most family-based programmes were effective. There was insufficient evidence to conclude that multiple interventions provided additional benefit over single interventions. In these Cochrane reviews, some school, family or multi-component prevention programmes were shown to be effective in reducing alcohol misuse in youths. However, these results warrant a cautious interpretation, since bias and/or contextual factors may have affected the trial results. Further research should replicate the most promising studies identified in these reviews and pay particular attention to content and context factors through rigorous evaluation.

  16. Towards PubMed 2.0.

    PubMed

    Fiorini, Nicolas; Lipman, David J; Lu, Zhiyong

    2017-10-30

    Staff from the National Center for Biotechnology Information in the US describe recent improvements to the PubMed search engine and outline plans for the future, including a new experimental site called PubMed Labs.

  17. pubmed.mineR: an R package with text-mining algorithms to analyse PubMed abstracts.

    PubMed

    Rani, Jyoti; Shah, A B Rauf; Ramachandran, Srinivasan

    2015-10-01

    The PubMed literature database is a valuable source of information for scientific research. It is rich in biomedical literature with more than 24 million citations. Data-mining of voluminous literature is a challenging task. Although several text-mining algorithms have been developed in recent years with focus on data visualization, they have limitations such as speed, are rigid and are not available in the open source. We have developed an R package, pubmed.mineR, wherein we have combined the advantages of existing algorithms, overcome their limitations, and offer user flexibility and link with other packages in Bioconductor and the Comprehensive R Network (CRAN) in order to expand the user capabilities for executing multifaceted approaches. Three case studies are presented, namely, 'Evolving role of diabetes educators', 'Cancer risk assessment' and 'Dynamic concepts on disease and comorbidity' to illustrate the use of pubmed.mineR. The package generally runs fast with small elapsed times in regular workstations even on large corpus sizes and with compute intensive functions. The pubmed.mineR is available at http://cran.rproject. org/web/packages/pubmed.mineR.

  18. Towards PubMed 2.0

    PubMed Central

    Fiorini, Nicolas; Lipman, David J; Lu, Zhiyong

    2017-01-01

    Staff from the National Center for Biotechnology Information in the US describe recent improvements to the PubMed search engine and outline plans for the future, including a new experimental site called PubMed Labs. PMID:29083299

  19. Effectiveness of psychosocial interventions in eating disorders: an overview of Cochrane systematic reviews.

    PubMed

    Costa, Marcelle Barrueco; Melnik, Tamara

    2016-01-01

    Eating disorders are psychiatric conditions originated from and perpetuated by individual, family and sociocultural factors. The psychosocial approach to treatment and prevention of relapse is crucial. To present an overview of the scientific evidence on effectiveness of psychosocial interventions in treatment of eating disorders. All systematic reviews published by the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews - Cochrane Library on the topic were included. Afterwards, as from the least recent date of these reviews (2001), an additional search was conducted at PubMed with sensitive search strategy and with the same keywords used. A total of 101 primary studies and 30 systematic reviews (5 Cochrane systematic reviews), meta-analysis, guidelines or narrative reviews of literature were included. The main outcomes were: symptomatic remission, body image, cognitive distortion, psychiatric comorbidity, psychosocial functioning and patient satisfaction. The cognitive behavioral approach was the most effective treatment, especially for bulimia nervosa, binge eating disorder and the night eating syndrome. For anorexia nervosa, the family approach showed greater effectiveness. Other effective approaches were interpersonal psychotherapy, dialectic behavioral therapy, support therapy and self-help manuals. Moreover, there was an increasing number of preventive and promotional approaches that addressed individual, family and social risk factors, being promising for the development of positive self-image and self-efficacy. Further studies are required to evaluate the impact of multidisciplinary approaches on all eating disorders, as well as the cost-effectiveness of some effective modalities, such as the cognitive behavioral therapy. RESUMO Transtornos alimentares são doenças psiquiátricas originadas de e perpetuadas por fatores individuais, familiares e socioculturais. A abordagem psicossocial é essencial para o tratamento e a prevenção de recaídas. Apresentar uma vis

  20. Knowledge Translation: The Bridging Function of Cochrane Rehabilitation.

    PubMed

    Negrini, Stefano; Gimigliano, Francesca; Arienti, Chiara; Kiekens, Carlotte

    2018-06-01

    Cochrane Rehabilitation is aimed to ensure that all rehabilitation professionals can apply Evidence Based Clinical Practice and take decisions according to the best and most appropriate evidence in this specific field, combining the best available evidence as gathered by high-quality Cochrane systematic reviews, with their own clinical expertise and the values of patients. This mission can be pursued through knowledge translation. The aim of this article is to shortly present what knowledge translation is, how and why Cochrane (previously known as Cochrane Collaboration) is trying to reorganize itself in light of knowledge translation, and the relevance that this process has for Cochrane Rehabilitation and in the end for the whole world of rehabilitation. It is well known how it is difficult to effectively apply in everyday life what we would like to do and to apply the scientific knowledge in the clinical field: this is called the know-do gap. In the field of evidence-based medicine, where Cochrane belongs, it has been proven that high-quality evidence is not consistently applied in practice. A solution to these problems is the so-called knowledge translation. In this context, Cochrane Rehabilitation is organized to provide the best possible knowledge translation in both directions (bridging function), obviously toward the world of rehabilitation (spreading reviews), but also to the Cochrane community (production of reviews significant for rehabilitation). Cochrane is now strongly pushing to improve its knowledge translation activities, and this creates a strong base for Cochrane Rehabilitation work, focused not only on spreading the evidence but also on improving its production to make it more meaningful for the world of rehabilitation. Copyright © 2017 American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  1. Visit the new MedlinePlus | NIH MedlinePlus the Magazine

    MedlinePlus

    ... this page please turn Javascript on. Visit the new MedlinePlus Past Issues / Fall 2010 Table of Contents ... trusted, up-to-date medical information Visit the new MedlinePlus From the top medical experts at the ...

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  3. A systematic assessment of Cochrane reviews and systematic reviews published in high-impact medical journals related to cancer.

    PubMed

    Goldkuhle, Marius; Narayan, Vikram M; Weigl, Aaron; Dahm, Philipp; Skoetz, Nicole

    2018-03-25

    To compare cancer-related systematic reviews (SRs) published in the Cochrane Database of SRs (CDSR) and high-impact journals, with respect to type, content, quality and citation rates. Methodological SR with assessment and comparison of SRs and meta-analyses. Two authors independently assessed methodological quality using an Assessment of Multiple Systematic Reviews (AMSTAR)-based extraction form. Both authors independently screened search results, extracted content-relevant characteristics and retrieved citation numbers of the included reviews using the Clarivate Analytics Web of Science database. Cancer-related SRs were retrieved from the CDSR, as well as from the 10 journals which publish oncological SRs and had the highest impact factors, using a comprehensive search in both the CDSR and MEDLINE. We included all cancer-related SRs and meta-analyses published from January 2011 to May 2016. Methodological SRs were excluded. We included 346 applicable Cochrane reviews and 215 SRs from high-impact journals. Cochrane reviews consistently met more individual AMSTAR criteria, notably with regard to an a priori design (risk ratio (RR) 3.89; 95% CI 3.10 to 4.88), inclusion of the grey literature and trial registries (RR 3.52; 95% CI 2.84 to 4.37) in their searches, and the reporting of excluded studies (RR 8.80; 95% CI 6.06 to 12.78). Cochrane reviews were less likely to address questions of prognosis (RR 0.04; 95% CI 0.02 to 0.09), use individual patient data (RR 0.03; 95% CI 0.01 to 0.09) or be based on non-randomised controlled trials (RR 0.04; 95% CI 0.02 to 0.09). Citation rates of Cochrane reviews were notably lower than those for high-impact journals (Cochrane reviews: mean number of citations 6.52 (range 0-143); high-impact journal SRs: 74.45 (0-652)). When comparing cancer-related SRs published in the CDSR versus those published in high-impact medical journals, Cochrane reviews were consistently of higher methodological quality, but cited less

  4. Articles about MedlinePlus

    MedlinePlus

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  5. Linking to MedlinePlus

    MedlinePlus

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  6. Sensitivity and predictive value of 15 PubMed search strategies to answer clinical questions rated against full systematic reviews.

    PubMed

    Agoritsas, Thomas; Merglen, Arnaud; Courvoisier, Delphine S; Combescure, Christophe; Garin, Nicolas; Perrier, Arnaud; Perneger, Thomas V

    2012-06-12

    Clinicians perform searches in PubMed daily, but retrieving relevant studies is challenging due to the rapid expansion of medical knowledge. Little is known about the performance of search strategies when they are applied to answer specific clinical questions. To compare the performance of 15 PubMed search strategies in retrieving relevant clinical trials on therapeutic interventions. We used Cochrane systematic reviews to identify relevant trials for 30 clinical questions. Search terms were extracted from the abstract using a predefined procedure based on the population, interventions, comparison, outcomes (PICO) framework and combined into queries. We tested 15 search strategies that varied in their query (PIC or PICO), use of PubMed's Clinical Queries therapeutic filters (broad or narrow), search limits, and PubMed links to related articles. We assessed sensitivity (recall) and positive predictive value (precision) of each strategy on the first 2 PubMed pages (40 articles) and on the complete search output. The performance of the search strategies varied widely according to the clinical question. Unfiltered searches and those using the broad filter of Clinical Queries produced large outputs and retrieved few relevant articles within the first 2 pages, resulting in a median sensitivity of only 10%-25%. In contrast, all searches using the narrow filter performed significantly better, with a median sensitivity of about 50% (all P < .001 compared with unfiltered queries) and positive predictive values of 20%-30% (P < .001 compared with unfiltered queries). This benefit was consistent for most clinical questions. Searches based on related articles retrieved about a third of the relevant studies. The Clinical Queries narrow filter, along with well-formulated queries based on the PICO framework, provided the greatest aid in retrieving relevant clinical trials within the 2 first PubMed pages. These results can help clinicians apply effective strategies to answer their

  7. A bibliometric analysis of Australian general practice publications from 1980 to 2007 using PubMed.

    PubMed

    Mendis, Kumara; Kidd, Michael R; Schattner, Peter; Canalese, Joseph

    2010-01-01

    We analysed Australian general practice (GP) publications in PubMed from 1980 to 2007 to determine journals, authors, publication types, national health priority areas (NHPA) and compared the results with those from three specialties (public health, cardiology and medical informatics) and two countries (the UK and New Zealand). Australian GP publications were downloaded in MEDLINE format using PubMed queries and were written to a Microsoft Access database using a software application. Search Query Language and online PubMed queries were used for further analysis. There were 4777 publications from 1980 to 2007. Australian Family Physician (38.1%) and the Medical Journal of Australia (17.6%) contributed 55.7% of publications. Reviews (12.7%), letters (6.6%), clinical trials (6.5%) and systematic reviews (5%) were the main PubMed publication types. Thirty five percent of publications addressed National Health Priority Areas with material on mental health (13.7%), neoplasms (6.5%) and cardiovascular conditions (5.9%). The comparable numbers of publications for the three specialties were: public health - 80 911, cardiology - 15 130 and medical informatics - 3338; total country GP comparisons were: UK - 14 658 and New Zealand - 1111. Australian GP publications have shown an impressive growth from 1980 to 2007 with a 15-fold increase. This increase may be due in part to the actions of the Australian government over the past decade to financially support research in primary care, as well as the maturing of academic general practice. This analysis can assist governments, researchers, policy makers and others to target resources so that further developments can be encouraged, supported and monitored.

  8. Diagnosis checking of statistical analysis in RCTs indexed in PubMed.

    PubMed

    Lee, Paul H; Tse, Andy C Y

    2017-11-01

    Statistical analysis is essential for reporting of the results of randomized controlled trials (RCTs), as well as evaluating their effectiveness. However, the validity of a statistical analysis also depends on whether the assumptions of that analysis are valid. To review all RCTs published in journals indexed in PubMed during December 2014 to provide a complete picture of how RCTs handle assumptions of statistical analysis. We reviewed all RCTs published in December 2014 that appeared in journals indexed in PubMed using the Cochrane highly sensitive search strategy. The 2014 impact factors of the journals were used as proxies for their quality. The type of statistical analysis used and whether the assumptions of the analysis were tested were reviewed. In total, 451 papers were included. Of the 278 papers that reported a crude analysis for the primary outcomes, 31 (27·2%) reported whether the outcome was normally distributed. Of the 172 papers that reported an adjusted analysis for the primary outcomes, diagnosis checking was rarely conducted, with only 20%, 8·6% and 7% checked for generalized linear model, Cox proportional hazard model and multilevel model, respectively. Study characteristics (study type, drug trial, funding sources, journal type and endorsement of CONSORT guidelines) were not associated with the reporting of diagnosis checking. The diagnosis of statistical analyses in RCTs published in PubMed-indexed journals was usually absent. Journals should provide guidelines about the reporting of a diagnosis of assumptions. © 2017 Stichting European Society for Clinical Investigation Journal Foundation.

  9. PubMed Medical publications from Libya

    PubMed Central

    Bakoush, O; Al-Tubuly, AA; Ashammakhi, N; Elkhammas, EA

    2007-01-01

    Medical research and publications are the back-bone for advancing the medical field. We identified the Pubmed medical publications that are affiliated with Libya to shed some light on the contribution of this country's medical community to the PubMed database. All publications affiliated with Libya in the PubMed were counted over a five year period ending December 2006. We also used the same method to obtain data on the PubMed medical publications from Tunisia, Morocco and Yemen. Tunisia had the largest number of PubMed publications among the studied countries: 20.4 publications per million population per year and 7.2 publications per year per one billion US$ GDP. Libya had much fewer publications: 2.4 publications per million population per year and 0.4 publications per one billion US$ GDP. The citation frequency for Libyan published research was very low compared to Tunisian and Moroccan related research. Conclusion: This preliminary analysis shows that medical research output in Libya is about twenty times less than in other countries with similar backgrounds, and that it needs to be enhanced. PMID:21503210

  10. Feasibility of a knowledge translation CME program: Courriels Cochrane.

    PubMed

    Pluye, Pierre; Grad, Roland; Granikov, Vera; Theriault, Guyléne; Frémont, Pierre; Burnand, Bernard; Mercer, Jay; Marlow, Bernard; Arroll, Bruce; Luconi, Francesca; Légaré, France; Labrecque, Michel; Ladouceur, Roger; Bouthillier, France; Sridhar, Soumya Bindiganavile; Moscovici, Jonathan

    2012-01-01

    Systematic literature reviews provide best evidence, but are underused by clinicians. Thus, integrating Cochrane reviews into continuing medical education (CME) is challenging. We designed a pilot CME program where summaries of Cochrane reviews (Courriels Cochrane) were disseminated by e-mail. Program participants automatically received CME credit for each Courriel Cochrane they rated. The feasibility of this program is reported (delivery, participation, and participant evaluation). We recruited French-speaking physicians through the Canadian Medical Association. Program delivery and participation were documented. Participants rated the informational value of Courriels Cochrane using the Information Assessment Method (IAM), which documented their reflective learning (relevance, cognitive impact, use for a patient, expected health benefits). IAM responses were aggregated and analyzed. The program was delivered as planned. Thirty Courriels Cochrane were delivered to 985 physicians, and 127 (12.9%) completed at least one IAM questionnaire. Out of 1109 Courriels Cochrane ratings, 973 (87.7%) conta-ined 1 or more types of positive cognitive impact, while 835 (75.3%) were clinically relevant. Participants reported the use of information for a patient and expected health benefits in 595 (53.7%) and 569 (51.3%) ratings, respectively. Program delivery required partnering with 5 organizations. Participants valued Courriels Cochrane. IAM ratings documented their reflective learning. The aggregation of IAM ratings documented 3 levels of CME outcomes: participation, learning, and performance. This evaluation study demonstrates the feasibility of the Courriels Cochrane as an approach to further disseminate Cochrane systematic literature reviews to clinicians and document self-reported knowledge translation associated with Cochrane reviews. Copyright © 2012 The Alliance for Continuing Education in the Health Professions, the Society for Academic Continuing Medical Education, and

  11. Making processes reliable: a validated pubmed search strategy for identifying new or emerging technologies.

    PubMed

    Varela-Lema, Leonora; Punal-Riobóo, Jeanette; Acción, Beatriz Casal; Ruano-Ravina, Alberto; García, Marisa López

    2012-10-01

    Horizon scanning systems need to handle a wide range of sources to identify new or emerging health technologies. The objective of this study is to develop a validated Medline bibliographic search strategy (PubMed search engine) to systematically identify new or emerging health technologies. The proposed Medline search strategy combines free text terms commonly used in article titles to denote innovation within index terms that make reference to the specific fields of interest. Efficacy was assessed by running the search over a period of 1 year (2009) and analyzing its retrieval performance (number and characteristics). For comparison purposes, all article abstracts published during 2009 in six preselected key research journals and eight high impact surgery journals were scanned. Sensitivity was defined as the proportion of relevant new or emerging technologies published in key journals that would be identified in the search strategy within the first 2 years of publication. The search yielded 6,228 abstracts of potentially new or emerging technologies. Of these, 459 were classified as new or emerging (383 truly new or emerging and 76 new indications). The scanning of 12,061 journal abstracts identified 35 relevant new or emerging technologies. Of these, twenty-nine were located within the Medline search strategy during the first 2 years of publication (sensitivity = 83 percent). The current search strategy, validated against key journals, has demonstrated to be effective for horizon scanning. Even though it can require adaptations depending on the scope of the horizon scanning system, it could serve to simplify and standardize scanning processes.

  12. Dermatological publications in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries. An analysis of 1966-2004 Medline papers.

    PubMed

    Al-Aboud, Fahad M; Al-Aboud, Khalid M; Al-Hawsawi, Khalid A; Ramesh, Venketshari

    2004-11-01

    To investigate the publications in dermatology cited in the Medline from 6 countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) from 1966 to 2004. Medline was searched with the aid of Internet provider Pubmed using the same strategy at a given time for all countries. At the time of search, the Medline listed biomedical research papers from the GCC countries totaled 12837. Of these, 140 were in Dermatology. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia followed by Kuwait was by far the most prolific contributor, whereas almost none were noted from Bahrain. The publications were highest during the year 2002 (19) followed by 2003 (13), most of them being in the English language in the International Journal of Dermatology (60 citations) and Pediatric Dermatology (13 citations). Though the GCC countries have seen a relatively small period in the history of development of medical research, data show that they are trying to keep pace with the rest of the developed world. What remains to be exploited is their good economy that should be directed to provide better infrastructure and improve the quality of training programs. Professional societies within the region must play an active role in ensuring optimum and judicious use of funds.

  13. Besides Precision & Recall: Exploring Alternative Approaches to Evaluating an Automatic Indexing Tool for MEDLINE

    PubMed Central

    Névéol, Aurélie; Zeng, Kelly; Bodenreider, Olivier

    2006-01-01

    Objective This paper explores alternative approaches for the evaluation of an automatic indexing tool for MEDLINE, complementing the traditional precision and recall method. Materials and methods The performance of MTI, the Medical Text Indexer used at NLM to produce MeSH recommendations for biomedical journal articles is evaluated on a random set of MEDLINE citations. The evaluation examines semantic similarity at the term level (indexing terms). In addition, the documents retrieved by queries resulting from MTI index terms for a given document are compared to the PubMed related citations for this document. Results Semantic similarity scores between sets of index terms are higher than the corresponding Dice similarity scores. Overall, 75% of the original documents and 58% of the top ten related citations are retrieved by queries based on the automatic indexing. Conclusions The alternative measures studied in this paper confirm previous findings and may be used to select particular documents from the test set for a more thorough analysis. PMID:17238409

  14. Besides precision & recall: exploring alternative approaches to evaluating an automatic indexing tool for MEDLINE.

    PubMed

    Neveol, Aurélie; Zeng, Kelly; Bodenreider, Olivier

    2006-01-01

    This paper explores alternative approaches for the evaluation of an automatic indexing tool for MEDLINE, complementing the traditional precision and recall method. The performance of MTI, the Medical Text Indexer used at NLM to produce MeSH recommendations for biomedical journal articles is evaluated on a random set of MEDLINE citations. The evaluation examines semantic similarity at the term level (indexing terms). In addition, the documents retrieved by queries resulting from MTI index terms for a given document are compared to the PubMed related citations for this document. Semantic similarity scores between sets of index terms are higher than the corresponding Dice similarity scores. Overall, 75% of the original documents and 58% of the top ten related citations are retrieved by queries based on the automatic indexing. The alternative measures studied in this paper confirm previous findings and may be used to select particular documents from the test set for a more thorough analysis.

  15. Predicting clicks of PubMed articles.

    PubMed

    Mao, Yuqing; Lu, Zhiyong

    2013-01-01

    Predicting the popularity or access usage of an article has the potential to improve the quality of PubMed searches. We can model the click trend of each article as its access changes over time by mining the PubMed query logs, which contain the previous access history for all articles. In this article, we examine the access patterns produced by PubMed users in two years (July 2009 to July 2011). We explore the time series of accesses for each article in the query logs, model the trends with regression approaches, and subsequently use the models for prediction. We show that the click trends of PubMed articles are best fitted with a log-normal regression model. This model allows the number of accesses an article receives and the time since it first becomes available in PubMed to be related via quadratic and logistic functions, with the model parameters to be estimated via maximum likelihood. Our experiments predicting the number of accesses for an article based on its past usage demonstrate that the mean absolute error and mean absolute percentage error of our model are 4.0% and 8.1% lower than the power-law regression model, respectively. The log-normal distribution is also shown to perform significantly better than a previous prediction method based on a human memory theory in cognitive science. This work warrants further investigation on the utility of such a log-normal regression approach towards improving information access in PubMed.

  16. Fine-grained indexing of the biomedical literature: MeSH subheading attachment for a MEDLINE indexing tool.

    PubMed

    Névéol, Aurélie; Shooshan, Sonya E; Mork, James G; Aronson, Alan R

    2007-10-11

    This paper reports on the latest results of an Indexing Initiative effort addressing the automatic attachment of subheadings to MeSH main headings recommended by the NLM's Medical Text Indexer. Several linguistic and statistical approaches are used to retrieve and attach the subheadings. Continuing collaboration with NLM indexers also provided insight on how automatic methods can better enhance indexing practice. The methods were evaluated on corpus of 50,000 MEDLINE citations. For main heading/subheading pair recommendations, the best precision is obtained with a post-processing rule method (58%) while the best recall is obtained by pooling all methods (64%). For stand-alone subheading recommendations, the best performance is obtained with the PubMed Related Citations algorithm. Significant progress has been made in terms of subheading coverage. After further evaluation, some of this work may be integrated in the MEDLINE indexing workflow.

  17. Automatically identifying health outcome information in MEDLINE records.

    PubMed

    Demner-Fushman, Dina; Few, Barbara; Hauser, Susan E; Thoma, George

    2006-01-01

    Understanding the effect of a given intervention on the patient's health outcome is one of the key elements in providing optimal patient care. This study presents a methodology for automatic identification of outcomes-related information in medical text and evaluates its potential in satisfying clinical information needs related to health care outcomes. An annotation scheme based on an evidence-based medicine model for critical appraisal of evidence was developed and used to annotate 633 MEDLINE citations. Textual, structural, and meta-information features essential to outcome identification were learned from the created collection and used to develop an automatic system. Accuracy of automatic outcome identification was assessed in an intrinsic evaluation and in an extrinsic evaluation, in which ranking of MEDLINE search results obtained using PubMed Clinical Queries relied on identified outcome statements. The accuracy and positive predictive value of outcome identification were calculated. Effectiveness of the outcome-based ranking was measured using mean average precision and precision at rank 10. Automatic outcome identification achieved 88% to 93% accuracy. The positive predictive value of individual sentences identified as outcomes ranged from 30% to 37%. Outcome-based ranking improved retrieval accuracy, tripling mean average precision and achieving 389% improvement in precision at rank 10. Preliminary results in outcome-based document ranking show potential validity of the evidence-based medicine-model approach in timely delivery of information critical to clinical decision support at the point of service.

  18. Feasibility of a Knowledge Translation CME Program: "Courriels Cochrane"

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Pluye, Pierre; Grad, Roland; Granikov, Vera; Theriault, Guylene; Fremont, Pierre; Burnand, Bernard; Mercer, Jay; Marlow, Bernard; Arroll, Bruce; Luconi, Francesca; Legare, France; Labrecque, Michel; Ladouceur, Roger; Bouthillier, France; Sridhar, Soumya Bindiganavile; Moscovici, Jonathan

    2012-01-01

    Introduction: Systematic literature reviews provide best evidence, but are underused by clinicians. Thus, integrating Cochrane reviews into continuing medical education (CME) is challenging. We designed a pilot CME program where summaries of Cochrane reviews ("Courriels Cochrane") were disseminated by e-mail. Program participants…

  19. The Cochrane Library review titles that are important to users of health care, a Cochrane Consumer Network project

    PubMed Central

    Wale, Janet L.; Belizán, María; Nadel, Jane; Jeffrey, Claire; Vij, Sita L.

    2011-01-01

    Abstract Background  The Cochrane Consumer Network is an internet‐based community of international users of health care contributing to the work of The Cochrane Collaboration, whose mission is to inform healthcare decision making through development of systematic reviews of best evidence on healthcare interventions. Objective  To prioritize existing review titles listed on The Cochrane Library from a healthcare user perspective, with particular emphasis on patients, carers and health consumers. Design  An online survey was developed and after piloting was made available internationally. The broad dissemination strategy targeted Consumer Network members and Cochrane Review Group editorial staff to identify champions who notified patient support groups and participated in snowballing. The first part of the survey defined criteria that could be applied to review titles and asked survey respondents to rank them. The second part asked respondents to select a health area and prioritize review titles that were of importance to them. Each health area corresponded to a Cochrane Review Group. Results and discussion  Sufficient responses were obtained from 522 valid responses to prioritize review topics in 19 health areas. A total of 321 respondents completed the titles assessment. The types of prioritized interventions were determined by the health area. An important observation was the emphasis on lifestyle and non‐medication therapies in many of the included health areas. The clearest exception to this broad observation was where acute care is required such as antibiotics for acute respiratory tract and HIV‐associated infections and for cardiac conditions. For some cancers, advanced cancer interventions were prioritized. The most important criteria were for the title to convey a clear meaning and the title conveyed that the review would have an impact on health and well‐being. The least important criteria were that the topic was newsworthy or prioritized in

  20. [Taehan Kan Hakhoe Chi (The Korean Journal of Hepatology) and Index Medicus (Medline/PubMed)].

    PubMed

    Lee, Dong Hoo

    2003-03-01

    It is our great pleasure to announce that the Taehan Kan Hakhoe Chi (The Korean Journal of Hepatology) was approved for listing, from 2002, in the Index Medicus, Medline/PubMed of the National Library of Medicine, NIH of USA. Herein, I review the searching tools employing a Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) such as liver disease and liver neoplasm or an author index for this Journal in the PubMed at a website. Of course, The Korean Journal of Hepatology should be continually striving to be upgraded. Dream comes true.

  1. Social networks in education of health professionals in bosnia and herzegovina - the role of pubmed/medline in improvement of medical sciences.

    PubMed

    Masic, Izet; Sivic, Suad

    2011-12-01

    Social network is a social structure made up of individuals and organizations that represent "nodes", and they are associated with one or more types of interdependency; such as: friendship, common interests, work, knowledge, prestige and many other interests. Beginning with the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, the Internet was a significant additional tool in the education of teenagers. Later, it takes more and more significant role in educating students and professionals. The aim of this paper is to investigate, to what extent and how effectively the Internet is used today. In addition, more specifically, this paper will research the implications of the well-known social networks in education of students and health professionals in Bosnia and Herzegovina (B&H). We compared the ratio of using Medline, as the largest biomedical data base system for spreading medical information, as basics for health education at biomedical faculties at five universities in B&H. According to data from the CRA (i.e. Communications Regulatory Agency) in B&H, in 2010, there were 522,364 internet access accounts, with about 2 million Internet users, representing about 52% of the total population. The Internet users' preference is dominated by the users of fast broadband access (e.g. xDSL) with 42.8%, and elsewhere, still with dialup access, with 25.2%. The results showed that only 11.6% of professors use Facebook type of social network, 49.3% of them have a profile on BiomedExperts scientific social network and 79% have available articles in the largest biomedical literature database MEDLINE. Students are also frequent users of general social networks and educational clips from You Tube, which they prefer to utilize considerably more than the other types of professionals. Students rarely use the facilities of professional social networks, because they contain mainly data and information needed for further, postgraduate professional education. In our research, we analized

  2. Predicting clicks of PubMed articles

    PubMed Central

    Mao, Yuqing; Lu, Zhiyong

    2013-01-01

    Predicting the popularity or access usage of an article has the potential to improve the quality of PubMed searches. We can model the click trend of each article as its access changes over time by mining the PubMed query logs, which contain the previous access history for all articles. In this article, we examine the access patterns produced by PubMed users in two years (July 2009 to July 2011). We explore the time series of accesses for each article in the query logs, model the trends with regression approaches, and subsequently use the models for prediction. We show that the click trends of PubMed articles are best fitted with a log-normal regression model. This model allows the number of accesses an article receives and the time since it first becomes available in PubMed to be related via quadratic and logistic functions, with the model parameters to be estimated via maximum likelihood. Our experiments predicting the number of accesses for an article based on its past usage demonstrate that the mean absolute error and mean absolute percentage error of our model are 4.0% and 8.1% lower than the power-law regression model, respectively. The log-normal distribution is also shown to perform significantly better than a previous prediction method based on a human memory theory in cognitive science. This work warrants further investigation on the utility of such a log-normal regression approach towards improving information access in PubMed. PMID:24551386

  3. A Cochrane Systematic Review finds no significant difference in outcome or risk of postoperative complications between day care and in-patient cataract surgery.

    PubMed

    Fedorowicz, Zbigniew; Lawrence, David J; Gutierrez, Peter

    2006-09-01

    This review was conducted to determine reliable evidence regarding the safety, feasibility, effectiveness, and cost-effectiveness of cataract extraction performed as a day care versus in-patient procedure. The search to identify randomized controlled trials comparing day care and in-patient surgery for age-related cataract included the Cochrane Eyes and Vision Group Trials Register, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, MEDLINE, EMBASE and LILACS Latin American and Caribbean Literature on Health Sciences. Assessment of methodological quality was based on criteria defined by the Cochrane Collaboration. The primary outcome was the achievement of a satisfactory visual acuity 6 weeks after operation. Two trials, involving a total of 1284 people, are included. One trial reported statistically significant differences in early postoperative complication rates in the day care group, which had no clinical relevance to visual outcomes 4 months postoperatively. Mean change in visual acuity Snellen lines of the operated eye 4 months postoperatively was 4.1 standard deviation SD 2.3 for the day care group and 4.1 SD 2.2 for the in-patient group. Costs were 20% more for the in-patient group attributable to higher costs for overnight stay.

  4. PubFocus: semantic MEDLINE/PubMed citations analytics through integration of controlled biomedical dictionaries and ranking algorithm

    PubMed Central

    Plikus, Maksim V; Zhang, Zina; Chuong, Cheng-Ming

    2006-01-01

    Background Understanding research activity within any given biomedical field is important. Search outputs generated by MEDLINE/PubMed are not well classified and require lengthy manual citation analysis. Automation of citation analytics can be very useful and timesaving for both novices and experts. Results PubFocus web server automates analysis of MEDLINE/PubMed search queries by enriching them with two widely used human factor-based bibliometric indicators of publication quality: journal impact factor and volume of forward references. In addition to providing basic volumetric statistics, PubFocus also prioritizes citations and evaluates authors' impact on the field of search. PubFocus also analyses presence and occurrence of biomedical key terms within citations by utilizing controlled vocabularies. Conclusion We have developed citations' prioritisation algorithm based on journal impact factor, forward referencing volume, referencing dynamics, and author's contribution level. It can be applied either to the primary set of PubMed search results or to the subsets of these results identified through key terms from controlled biomedical vocabularies and ontologies. NCI (National Cancer Institute) thesaurus and MGD (Mouse Genome Database) mammalian gene orthology have been implemented for key terms analytics. PubFocus provides a scalable platform for the integration of multiple available ontology databases. PubFocus analytics can be adapted for input sources of biomedical citations other than PubMed. PMID:17014720

  5. MedlinePlus XML Data Sources

    MedlinePlus

    ... on MedlinePlus health topic pages. With the Web service, software developers can build applications that leverage the authoritative, reliable health information in MedlinePlus. The MedlinePlus Web service is free of charge and does not require ...

  6. Fine-Grained Indexing of the Biomedical Literature: MeSH Subheading Attachment for a MEDLINE Indexing Tool

    PubMed Central

    Névéol, Aurélie; Shooshan, Sonya E.; Mork, James G.; Aronson, Alan R.

    2007-01-01

    Objective This paper reports on the latest results of an Indexing Initiative effort addressing the automatic attachment of subheadings to MeSH main headings recommended by the NLM’s Medical Text Indexer. Material and Methods Several linguistic and statistical approaches are used to retrieve and attach the subheadings. Continuing collaboration with NLM indexers also provided insight on how automatic methods can better enhance indexing practice. Results The methods were evaluated on corpus of 50,000 MEDLINE citations. For main heading/subheading pair recommendations, the best precision is obtained with a post-processing rule method (58%) while the best recall is obtained by pooling all methods (64%). For stand-alone subheading recommendations, the best performance is obtained with the PubMed Related Citations algorithm. Conclusion Significant progress has been made in terms of subheading coverage. After further evaluation, some of this work may be integrated in the MEDLINE indexing workflow. PMID:18693897

  7. CAM on PubMed

    MedlinePlus

    ... citations from the MEDLINE database and additional life science journals. It also includes links to many full-text articles at journal Web sites and other related Web resources. Sample Searches ...

  8. Identification of problems in search strategies in Cochrane Reviews.

    PubMed

    Franco, Juan Víctor Ariel; Garrote, Virginia Laura; Escobar Liquitay, Camila Micaela; Vietto, Valeria

    2018-05-15

    Search strategies are essential for the adequate retrieval of studies in a systematic review (SR). Our objective was to identify problems in the design and reporting of search strategies in a sample of new Cochrane SRs first published in The Cochrane Library in 2015. We took a random sample of 70 new Cochrane SRs of interventions published in 2015. We evaluated their design and reporting of search strategies using the recommendations from the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions, the Methodological Expectations of Cochrane Intervention Reviews, and the Peer Review of Electronic Search Strategies evidence-based guideline. Most reviews complied with the reporting standards in the Cochrane Handbook and the Methodological Expectations of Cochrane Intervention Reviews; however, 8 SRs did not search trials registers, 3 SRs included language restrictions, and there was inconsistent reporting of contact with individuals and searches of the gray literature. We found problems in the design of the search strategies in 73% of reviews (95% CI, 60-84%) and 53% of these contained problems (95% CI, 38-69%) that could limit both the sensitivity and precision of the search strategies. We found limitations in the design and reporting of search strategies. We consider that a greater adherence to the guidelines could improve their quality. Copyright © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  9. Mobile MedlinePlus | NIH MedlinePlus Magazine

    MedlinePlus

    ... Table of Contents Trusted medical information on your mobile phone http://m.medlineplus.gov Wondering what the side effects are for your new prescription? Go to Mobile MedlinePlus while you're waiting for the pharmacist ...

  10. MedlinePlus FAQ: What is MedlinePlus?

    MedlinePlus

    ... supplement information is available from the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) via AHFS ® Consumer Medication Information, and Natural Medicines Comprehensive Database Consumer Version. AHFS ® ... of information on alternative treatments. MedlinePlus has 100 monographs ...

  11. MedlinePlus FAQ: Can you tell me how to cite MedlinePlus pages?

    MedlinePlus

    ... article . Conuel T. Finding answers in a beauty shop. NIH MedlinePlus: the magazine [Internet]. 2012 Fall [cited ... identified Conuel T. Finding answers in a beauty shop. NIH MedlinePlus: the magazine. 2012 Fall; 7(3): ...

  12. PubMed searches: overview and strategies for clinicians.

    PubMed

    Lindsey, Wesley T; Olin, Bernie R

    2013-04-01

    PubMed is a biomedical and life sciences database maintained by a division of the National Library of Medicine known as the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI). It is a large resource with more than 5600 journals indexed and greater than 22 million total citations. Searches conducted in PubMed provide references that are more specific for the intended topic compared with other popular search engines. Effective PubMed searches allow the clinician to remain current on the latest clinical trials, systematic reviews, and practice guidelines. PubMed continues to evolve by allowing users to create a customized experience through the My NCBI portal, new arrangements and options in search filters, and supporting scholarly projects through exportation of citations to reference managing software. Prepackaged search options available in the Clinical Queries feature also allow users to efficiently search for clinical literature. PubMed also provides information regarding the source journals themselves through the Journals in NCBI Databases link. This article provides an overview of the PubMed database's structure and features as well as strategies for conducting an effective search.

  13. Social Networks in Education of Health Professionals in Bosnia and Herzegovina – the Role of Pubmed/Medline in Improvement of Medical Sciences

    PubMed Central

    Masic, Izet; Sivic, Suad

    2011-01-01

    Introduction: Social network is a social structure made up of individuals and organizations that represent “nodes”, and they are associated with one or more types of interdependency; such as: friendship, common interests, work, knowledge, prestige and many other interests. Beginning with the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, the Internet was a significant additional tool in the education of teenagers. Later, it takes more and more significant role in educating students and professionals. Goal: The aim of this paper is to investigate, to what extent and how effectively the Internet is used today. In addition, more specifically, this paper will research the implications of the well-known social networks in education of students and health professionals in Bosnia and Herzegovina (B&H). Material and methods: We compared the ratio of using Medline, as the largest biomedical data base system for spreading medical information, as basics for health education at biomedical faculties at five universities in B&H. Results and discussion: According to data from the CRA (i.e. Communications Regulatory Agency) in B&H, in 2010, there were 522,364 internet access accounts, with about 2 million Internet users, representing about 52% of the total population. The Internet users’ preference is dominated by the users of fast broadband access (e.g. xDSL) with 42.8%, and elsewhere, still with dialup access, with 25.2%. The results showed that only 11.6% of professors use Facebook type of social network, 49.3% of them have a profile on BiomedExperts scientific social network and 79% have available articles in the largest biomedical literature database MEDLINE. Students are also frequent users of general social networks and educational clips from You Tube, which they prefer to utilize considerably more than the other types of professionals. Students rarely use the facilities of professional social networks, because they contain mainly data and information needed for

  14. Development of a PubMed Based Search Tool for Identifying Sex and Gender Specific Health Literature.

    PubMed

    Song, Michael M; Simonsen, Cheryl K; Wilson, Joanna D; Jenkins, Marjorie R

    2016-02-01

    An effective literature search strategy is critical to achieving the aims of Sex and Gender Specific Health (SGSH): to understand sex and gender differences through research and to effectively incorporate the new knowledge into the clinical decision making process to benefit both male and female patients. The goal of this project was to develop and validate an SGSH literature search tool that is readily and freely available to clinical researchers and practitioners. PubMed, a freely available search engine for the Medline database, was selected as the platform to build the SGSH literature search tool. Combinations of Medical Subject Heading terms, text words, and title words were evaluated for optimal specificity and sensitivity. The search tool was then validated against reference bases compiled for two disease states, diabetes and stroke. Key sex and gender terms and limits were bundled to create a search tool to facilitate PubMed SGSH literature searches. During validation, the search tool retrieved 50 of 94 (53.2%) stroke and 62 of 95 (65.3%) diabetes reference articles selected for validation. A general keyword search of stroke or diabetes combined with sex difference retrieved 33 of 94 (35.1%) stroke and 22 of 95 (23.2%) diabetes reference base articles, with lower sensitivity and specificity for SGSH content. The Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center SGSH PubMed Search Tool provides higher sensitivity and specificity to sex and gender specific health literature. The tool will facilitate research, clinical decision-making, and guideline development relevant to SGSH.

  15. Development of a PubMed Based Search Tool for Identifying Sex and Gender Specific Health Literature

    PubMed Central

    Song, Michael M.; Simonsen, Cheryl K.; Wilson, Joanna D.

    2016-01-01

    Abstract Background: An effective literature search strategy is critical to achieving the aims of Sex and Gender Specific Health (SGSH): to understand sex and gender differences through research and to effectively incorporate the new knowledge into the clinical decision making process to benefit both male and female patients. The goal of this project was to develop and validate an SGSH literature search tool that is readily and freely available to clinical researchers and practitioners. Methods: PubMed, a freely available search engine for the Medline database, was selected as the platform to build the SGSH literature search tool. Combinations of Medical Subject Heading terms, text words, and title words were evaluated for optimal specificity and sensitivity. The search tool was then validated against reference bases compiled for two disease states, diabetes and stroke. Results: Key sex and gender terms and limits were bundled to create a search tool to facilitate PubMed SGSH literature searches. During validation, the search tool retrieved 50 of 94 (53.2%) stroke and 62 of 95 (65.3%) diabetes reference articles selected for validation. A general keyword search of stroke or diabetes combined with sex difference retrieved 33 of 94 (35.1%) stroke and 22 of 95 (23.2%) diabetes reference base articles, with lower sensitivity and specificity for SGSH content. Conclusions: The Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center SGSH PubMed Search Tool provides higher sensitivity and specificity to sex and gender specific health literature. The tool will facilitate research, clinical decision-making, and guideline development relevant to SGSH. PMID:26555409

  16. Indexing of randomised controlled trials of physiotherapy interventions: a comparison of AMED, CENTRAL, CINAHL, EMBASE, hooked on evidence, PEDro, PsycINFO and PubMed.

    PubMed

    Moseley, Anne M; Sherrington, Catherine; Elkins, Mark R; Herbert, Robert D; Maher, Christopher G

    2009-09-01

    To compare the comprehensiveness of indexing the reports of randomised controlled trials of physiotherapy interventions by eight bibliographic databases (AMED, CENTRAL, CINAHL, EMBASE, Hooked on Evidence, PEDro, PsycINFO and PubMed). Audit of bibliographic databases. Two hundred and eighty-one reports of randomised controlled trials of physiotherapy interventions were identified by screening the reference lists of 30 relevant systematic reviews published in four consecutive issues of the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (Issue 3, 2007 to Issue 2, 2008). AMED, CENTRAL, CINAHL, EMBASE, Hooked on Evidence, PEDro, PsycINFO and PubMed were used to search for the trial reports. The number of trial reports indexed in each database was calculated. PEDro indexed 99% of the trial reports, CENTRAL indexed 98%, PubMed indexed 91%, EMBASE indexed 82%, CINAHL indexed 61%, Hooked on Evidence indexed 40%, AMED indexed 36% and PsycINFO indexed 17%. Most trial reports (92%) were indexed on four or more of the databases. One trial report was indexed on a single database (PEDro). Of the eight bibliographic databases examined, PEDro and CENTRAL provide the most comprehensive indexing of reports of randomised trials of physiotherapy interventions.

  17. MedlinePlus FAQ: How Often MedlinePlus is Updated

    MedlinePlus

    ... System Pharmacists is updated monthly. Natural Medicines Comprehensive Database Consumer Version is updated quarterly. Medical Encyclopedia: Updated monthly. ... Guidelines Viewers & Players MedlinePlus Connect for ...

  18. Sensitivity and Predictive Value of 15 PubMed Search Strategies to Answer Clinical Questions Rated Against Full Systematic Reviews

    PubMed Central

    Merglen, Arnaud; Courvoisier, Delphine S; Combescure, Christophe; Garin, Nicolas; Perrier, Arnaud; Perneger, Thomas V

    2012-01-01

    Background Clinicians perform searches in PubMed daily, but retrieving relevant studies is challenging due to the rapid expansion of medical knowledge. Little is known about the performance of search strategies when they are applied to answer specific clinical questions. Objective To compare the performance of 15 PubMed search strategies in retrieving relevant clinical trials on therapeutic interventions. Methods We used Cochrane systematic reviews to identify relevant trials for 30 clinical questions. Search terms were extracted from the abstract using a predefined procedure based on the population, interventions, comparison, outcomes (PICO) framework and combined into queries. We tested 15 search strategies that varied in their query (PIC or PICO), use of PubMed’s Clinical Queries therapeutic filters (broad or narrow), search limits, and PubMed links to related articles. We assessed sensitivity (recall) and positive predictive value (precision) of each strategy on the first 2 PubMed pages (40 articles) and on the complete search output. Results The performance of the search strategies varied widely according to the clinical question. Unfiltered searches and those using the broad filter of Clinical Queries produced large outputs and retrieved few relevant articles within the first 2 pages, resulting in a median sensitivity of only 10%–25%. In contrast, all searches using the narrow filter performed significantly better, with a median sensitivity of about 50% (all P < .001 compared with unfiltered queries) and positive predictive values of 20%–30% (P < .001 compared with unfiltered queries). This benefit was consistent for most clinical questions. Searches based on related articles retrieved about a third of the relevant studies. Conclusions The Clinical Queries narrow filter, along with well-formulated queries based on the PICO framework, provided the greatest aid in retrieving relevant clinical trials within the 2 first PubMed pages. These results can help

  19. Mobile MedlinePlus | NIH MedlinePlus the Magazine

    MedlinePlus

    ... Table of Contents Trusted medical information on your mobile phone http://m.medlineplus.gov Wondering what the side effects are for your new prescription? Go to Mobile MedlinePlus ( http://m.medlineplus.gov ) while you're ...

  20. Aggregator: a machine learning approach to identifying MEDLINE articles that derive from the same underlying clinical trial.

    PubMed

    Shao, Weixiang; Adams, Clive E; Cohen, Aaron M; Davis, John M; McDonagh, Marian S; Thakurta, Sujata; Yu, Philip S; Smalheiser, Neil R

    2015-03-01

    It is important to identify separate publications that report outcomes from the same underlying clinical trial, in order to avoid over-counting these as independent pieces of evidence. We created positive and negative training sets (comprised of pairs of articles reporting on the same condition and intervention) that were, or were not, linked to the same clinicaltrials.gov trial registry number. Features were extracted from MEDLINE and PubMed metadata; pairwise similarity scores were modeled using logistic regression. Article pairs from the same trial were identified with high accuracy (F1 score=0.843). We also created a clustering tool, Aggregator, that takes as input a PubMed user query for RCTs on a given topic, and returns article clusters predicted to arise from the same clinical trial. Although painstaking examination of full-text may be needed to be conclusive, metadata are surprisingly accurate in predicting when two articles derive from the same underlying clinical trial. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  1. [Chinese periodicals indexed in MEDLINE in 2006].

    PubMed

    Pan, Lian-Jun; Xia, Xin-Yi; Shang, Xue-Jun; Huang, Yu-Feng; Wang, Xiu-Lai

    2006-08-01

    For the first time, the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology published an analysis report of Chinese papers indexed in MEDLINE, which indicates that the Chinese government is paying more and more attention to the role of MEDLINE in the evaluation of scientific research. A total of 4 959 journals are listed in the Lists of Journals Indexed in MEDLINE (2006) published by National Library of Medicine, USA (NLM), of which 95 are published in China (including Hong Kong and Taiwan) and 2 another Chinese periodicals are published abroad. To familiarize MEDLINE to more medical researchers and to help them contribute to the journals indexed in MEDLINE, this article lists the top 10 Chinese medical institution whose published papers were indexed in MEDLINE in 2004 along with the Chinese periodicals indexed in MEDLINE in 2006. And the status of MEDLINE in China is briefly analyzed as well.

  2. PubMed related articles: a probabilistic topic-based model for content similarity

    PubMed Central

    Lin, Jimmy; Wilbur, W John

    2007-01-01

    Background We present a probabilistic topic-based model for content similarity called pmra that underlies the related article search feature in PubMed. Whether or not a document is about a particular topic is computed from term frequencies, modeled as Poisson distributions. Unlike previous probabilistic retrieval models, we do not attempt to estimate relevance–but rather our focus is "relatedness", the probability that a user would want to examine a particular document given known interest in another. We also describe a novel technique for estimating parameters that does not require human relevance judgments; instead, the process is based on the existence of MeSH ® in MEDLINE ®. Results The pmra retrieval model was compared against bm25, a competitive probabilistic model that shares theoretical similarities. Experiments using the test collection from the TREC 2005 genomics track shows a small but statistically significant improvement of pmra over bm25 in terms of precision. Conclusion Our experiments suggest that the pmra model provides an effective ranking algorithm for related article search. PMID:17971238

  3. Croup: MedlinePlus Health Topic

    MedlinePlus

    ... federal government agencies. MedlinePlus also links to health information from non-government Web sites. See our disclaimer about external links and our quality guidelines . About MedlinePlus Site Map FAQs Customer Support ...

  4. Searching for Controlled Trials of Complementary and Alternative Medicine: A Comparison of 15 Databases

    PubMed Central

    Cogo, Elise; Sampson, Margaret; Ajiferuke, Isola; Manheimer, Eric; Campbell, Kaitryn; Daniel, Raymond; Moher, David

    2011-01-01

    This project aims to assess the utility of bibliographic databases beyond the three major ones (MEDLINE, EMBASE and Cochrane CENTRAL) for finding controlled trials of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). Fifteen databases were searched to identify controlled clinical trials (CCTs) of CAM not also indexed in MEDLINE. Searches were conducted in May 2006 using the revised Cochrane highly sensitive search strategy (HSSS) and the PubMed CAM Subset. Yield of CAM trials per 100 records was determined, and databases were compared over a standardized period (2005). The Acudoc2 RCT, Acubriefs, Index to Chiropractic Literature (ICL) and Hom-Inform databases had the highest concentrations of non-MEDLINE records, with more than 100 non-MEDLINE records per 500. Other productive databases had ratios between 500 and 1500 records to 100 non-MEDLINE records—these were AMED, MANTIS, PsycINFO, CINAHL, Global Health and Alt HealthWatch. Five databases were found to be unproductive: AGRICOLA, CAIRSS, Datadiwan, Herb Research Foundation and IBIDS. Acudoc2 RCT yielded 100 CAM trials in the most recent 100 records screened. Acubriefs, AMED, Hom-Inform, MANTIS, PsycINFO and CINAHL had more than 25 CAM trials per 100 records screened. Global Health, ICL and Alt HealthWatch were below 25 in yield. There were 255 non-MEDLINE trials from eight databases in 2005, with only 10% indexed in more than one database. Yield varied greatly between databases; the most productive databases from both sampling methods were Acubriefs, Acudoc2 RCT, AMED and CINAHL. Low overlap between databases indicates comprehensive CAM literature searches will require multiple databases. PMID:19468052

  5. Searching for controlled trials of complementary and alternative medicine: a comparison of 15 databases.

    PubMed

    Cogo, Elise; Sampson, Margaret; Ajiferuke, Isola; Manheimer, Eric; Campbell, Kaitryn; Daniel, Raymond; Moher, David

    2011-01-01

    This project aims to assess the utility of bibliographic databases beyond the three major ones (MEDLINE, EMBASE and Cochrane CENTRAL) for finding controlled trials of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). Fifteen databases were searched to identify controlled clinical trials (CCTs) of CAM not also indexed in MEDLINE. Searches were conducted in May 2006 using the revised Cochrane highly sensitive search strategy (HSSS) and the PubMed CAM Subset. Yield of CAM trials per 100 records was determined, and databases were compared over a standardized period (2005). The Acudoc2 RCT, Acubriefs, Index to Chiropractic Literature (ICL) and Hom-Inform databases had the highest concentrations of non-MEDLINE records, with more than 100 non-MEDLINE records per 500. Other productive databases had ratios between 500 and 1500 records to 100 non-MEDLINE records-these were AMED, MANTIS, PsycINFO, CINAHL, Global Health and Alt HealthWatch. Five databases were found to be unproductive: AGRICOLA, CAIRSS, Datadiwan, Herb Research Foundation and IBIDS. Acudoc2 RCT yielded 100 CAM trials in the most recent 100 records screened. Acubriefs, AMED, Hom-Inform, MANTIS, PsycINFO and CINAHL had more than 25 CAM trials per 100 records screened. Global Health, ICL and Alt HealthWatch were below 25 in yield. There were 255 non-MEDLINE trials from eight databases in 2005, with only 10% indexed in more than one database. Yield varied greatly between databases; the most productive databases from both sampling methods were Acubriefs, Acudoc2 RCT, AMED and CINAHL. Low overlap between databases indicates comprehensive CAM literature searches will require multiple databases.

  6. The occupational health field in the cochrane collaboration.

    PubMed

    Verbeek, Jos

    2007-01-01

    It is the aim of the Cochrane Collaboration to gather, summarise and disseminate evidence of health care interventions. Recently, the Occupational Health Field has started to do so for occupational health interventions. In this article we would like to describe the organisation and the methods used by the Field. First, the use of research information to improve the quality of occupational health practice is explained. Next, the process and contents of Cochrane Reviews are described. The pros and cons of Cochrane Reviews are listed and what occupational health practitioners can learn from it. There is a great variety of occupational health interventions that requires flexibility in which research design to use. The Occupational Health Field will enhance our understanding of the effectiveness of occupational health interventions in the coming years.

  7. MedlinePlus Connect: Web Service

    MedlinePlus

    ... https://medlineplus.gov/connect/service.html MedlinePlus Connect: Web Service To use the sharing features on this ... if you implement MedlinePlus Connect by contacting us . Web Service Overview The parameters for the Web service ...

  8. MedlinePlus Connect: Technical Information

    MedlinePlus

    ... Service Technical Information Page MedlinePlus Connect Implementation Options Web Application How does it work? Responds to requests ... examples of MedlinePlus Connect Web Application response pages. Web Service How does it work? Responds to requests ...

  9. MedlinePlus Connect in Use

    MedlinePlus

    ... MedlinePlus Connect in Use URL of this page: https://medlineplus.gov/connect/users.html MedlinePlus Connect in ... will change.) Old URLs New URLs Web Application https://apps.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/services/mpconnect.cfm? ...

  10. MedlinePlus.gov Turns 10!

    MedlinePlus

    ... Navigation Bar Home Current Issue Past Issues MedlinePlus.gov Turns 10! Past Issues / Fall 2008 Table of ... Photo courtesy of Michael Spencer, NIH NIH's MedlinePlus.gov , the popular, consumer-friendly health Web site produced ...

  11. MedlinePlus Milestones: 1998-present

    MedlinePlus

    ... page links and information daily and also offers access to this full XML content through its Web ... search-based Web service that allows developers to access MedlinePlus health topic data in XML format. MedlinePlus ...

  12. Dialogues with Marilyn Cochran-Smith

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Fiorentini, Dario; Crecci, Vanessa Moreira

    2015-01-01

    For more than 30 years, Dr. Marilyn Cochran-Smith has developed and directed research and contributed to publications about education and "practitioner research," especially about teachers' research and learning in inquiry communities. Her primary topics are inquiry communities, teacher research, teacher education for social…

  13. The impact of Cochrane Reviews: a mixed-methods evaluation of outputs from Cochrane Review Groups supported by the National Institute for Health Research.

    PubMed

    Bunn, Frances; Trivedi, Daksha; Alderson, Phil; Hamilton, Laura; Martin, Alice; Pinkney, Emma; Iliffe, Steve

    2015-04-01

    The last few decades have seen a growing emphasis on evidence-informed decision-making in health care. Systematic reviews, such as those produced by Cochrane, have been a key component of this movement. The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Systematic Review Programme currently supports 20 Cochrane Review Groups (CRGs) in the UK and it is important that this funding represents value for money. The overall aim was to identify the impacts and likely impacts on health care, patient outcomes and value for money of Cochrane Reviews published by 20 NIHR-funded CRGs during the years 2007-11. We sent questionnaires to CRGs and review authors, undertook interviews with guideline developers (GDs) and used bibliometrics and documentary review to get an overview of CRG impact and to evaluate the impact of a sample of 60 Cochrane Reviews. The evaluation was guided by a framework with four categories (knowledge production, research targeting, informing policy development and impact on practice/services). A total of 3187 new and updated reviews were published on the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews between 2007 and 2011, 1502 (47%) of which were produced by the 20 CRGs funded by the NIHR. We found 40 examples where reviews appeared to have influenced primary research and reviews had contributed to the creation of new knowledge and stimulated debate. Twenty-seven of the 60 reviews had 100 or more citations in Google Scholar™ (Google, CA, USA). Overall, 483 systematic reviews had been cited in 247 sets of guidance. This included 62 sets of international guidance, 175 sets of national guidance (87 from the UK) and 10 examples of local guidance. Evidence from the interviews suggested that Cochrane Reviews often play an instrumental role in informing guidance, although reviews being a poor fit with guideline scope or methods, reviews being out of date and a lack of communication between CRGs and GDs were barriers to their use. Cochrane Reviews appeared to have led

  14. Dialysis: MedlinePlus Health Topic

    MedlinePlus

    ... Articles References and abstracts from MEDLINE/PubMed (National Library of Medicine) Article: Prevalence of chronic kidney disease- ... MedlinePlus Connect for EHRs For Developers U.S. National Library of Medicine 8600 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, MD 20894 ...

  15. MedlinePlus Connect: Email List

    MedlinePlus

    ... MedlinePlus Connect → Email List URL of this page: https://medlineplus.gov/connect/emaillist.html MedlinePlus Connect: Email ... will change.) Old URLs New URLs Web Application https://apps.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/services/mpconnect.cfm? ...

  16. MedlinePlus FAQ: News Coverage

    MedlinePlus

    ... gov/faq/news.html Question: I saw a news article on MedlinePlus but now I can't ... on this page, please enable JavaScript. Answer: Health news articles are no longer available on MedlinePlus. The ...

  17. MedlinePlus.gov on Twitter

    MedlinePlus

    ... page please turn Javascript on. MedlinePlus.gov on Twitter Past Issues / Fall 2009 Table of Contents You can now follow MedlinePlus.gov on Twitter: twitter.com/medlineplus4you The medlineplus4you Twitter feed provides ...

  18. Thad Cochran National Warmwater Aquaculture Center

    Science.gov Websites

    bytes) 2012 U.S. CATFISH DATABASE grnbar.jpg (3114 bytes) Delta Research & Extension Center to access these files. THAD COCHRAN NATIONAL WARMWATER AQUACULTURE CENTER Delta Research and

  19. MedlinePlus Connect: Web Application

    MedlinePlus

    ... will result in a query to the MedlinePlus search engine. If you specify a code and the name/ ... system or problem code, will use the MedlinePlus search engine (English only): https://connect.medlineplus.gov/application?mainSearchCriteria. ...

  20. Root-coverage procedures for the treatment of localized recession-type defects: a Cochrane systematic review.

    PubMed

    Chambrone, Leandro; Sukekava, Flávia; Araújo, Maurício G; Pustiglioni, Francisco E; Chambrone, Luiz Armando; Lima, Luiz A

    2010-04-01

    The purpose of this review is to evaluate the effectiveness of different root-coverage procedures in the treatment of recession-type defects. The Cochrane Oral Health Group Trials Register, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, MEDLINE, and EMBASE were searched for entries up to October 2008. There were no restrictions regarding publication status or the language of publication. Only clinical randomized controlled trials (RCTs) with a duration > or = 6 months that evaluated recession areas (Miller Class I or II > or = 3 mm) that were treated by means of periodontal plastic surgery procedures were included. Twenty-four RCTs provided data. Only one trial was considered to be at low risk of bias. The remaining trials were considered to be at high risk of bias. The results indicated a significantly greater reduction in gingival recession and gain in keratinized tissue for subepithelial connective tissue grafts (SCTGs) compared to guided tissue regeneration (GTR) with bioabsorbable membranes (GTR bms). A significantly greater gain in keratinized tissue was found for enamel matrix protein compared to a coronally advanced flap (0.40 mm) and for SCTGs compared to GTR bms plus bone substitutes. Limited data exist on the changes of esthetic conditions as related to the opinions and preferences of patients for specific procedures. SCTGs, coronally advanced flaps alone or associated with other biomaterial, and GTR may be used as root-coverage procedures for the treatment of localized recession-type defects. In cases where root coverage and gain in keratinized tissue are expected, the use of SCTGs seems to be more adequate.

  1. Bibliometric analysis of leishmaniasis research in Medline (1945-2010)

    PubMed Central

    2013-01-01

    Background Publications are often used as a measure of success of research work. Leishmaniasis is considered endemic in 98 countries, most of which are developing. This article describes a bibliometric review of the literature on leishmaniasis research indexed in PubMed during a 66-year period. Methods Medline was used via the PubMed online service of the US National Library of Medicine. The search strategy was Leishmania [MeSH] or leishmaniasis [MeSH] from 1 January 1945 until 31 December 2010. Neither language nor document type restrictions were employed. Results A total of 20,780 references were retrieved. The number of publications increased steadily over time, with 3,380 publications from 1945-1980 to 8,267 from 2001-2010. Leishmaniasis documents were published in 1,846 scientific journals, and Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (4.9%) was the top one. The USA was the predominant country by considering the first author’s institutional address (16.8%), followed by Brazil (14.9%), and then India (9.0%), however Brazil leads the scientific output in 2001-2010 period (18.5%), followed by the USA (13.5%) and India (10%). The production ranking changed when the number of publications was normalised by population (Israel and Switzerland), by gross domestic product (Nepal and Tunisia), and by gross national income per capita (India and Ethiopia). For geographical area, Europe led (31.7%), followed by Latin America (24.5%). Conclusions We have found an increase in the number of publications in the field of leishmaniasis. The USA and Brazil led scientific production on leishmaniasis research. PMID:23497410

  2. The Cochrane Collaboration: Institutional Analysis of a Knowledge Commons

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Heywood, Peter; Stephani, Anne Marie; Garner, Paul

    2018-01-01

    Cochrane is an international network that produces and updates new knowledge through systematic reviews for the health sector. Knowledge is a shared resource, and can be viewed as a commons. As Cochrane has been in existence for 25 years, we used Elinor Ostrom's theory of the commons and Institutional Analysis and Development Framework to appraise…

  3. Effective medical education: insights from the Cochrane Library.

    PubMed

    Satterlee, Winston G; Eggers, Robin G; Grimes, David A

    2008-05-01

    In 2006, the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education highlighted the need for linking educational activities to changes in competence, performance, or patient outcomes. Hence, educational providers increasingly need to know what strategies are effective. The Cochrane Library is widely regarded as the best source of credible evidence concerning health care. The authors searched the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (issue 4 for 2006) using the search terms "continuing medical education," "medical education," and "continuing education." They conducted a second complementary search of this database by review group (Effective Practice and Organization of Care). Finally, the authors examined the references of recent review articles for Cochrane reviews and found 9 relevant reviews. The most effective educational methods were the most interactive. Combined didactic presentations and workshops were more effective than traditional didactic presentations alone. Medical education was more effective when more than 1 intervention occurred, especially if these interventions occurred over an extended period. Targeted education should focus on changing a behavior that is simple, because effect size is inversely proportional to the complexity of the behavior. In the era of evidence-based medicine, interventions-including educational ones-should reflect the best available evidence. Cochrane reviews of randomized controlled trials of educational methods provide important guidance that often challenges traditional didactic approaches. Integrating the findings from the Cochrane reviews may allow continuing medical education to be more successful in bringing about changes to healthcare providers' behavior. Obstetricians & Gynecologists, Family Physicians. After completion of this article, the reader should be able to explain the scientific evidence concerning the effectiveness of various techniques used for continuing medical education, state the relative value of

  4. MedlinePlus FAQ: RSS Service

    MedlinePlus

    ... rss.html Question: Do you have a Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feed for MedlinePlus? To use the sharing features on this page, please enable JavaScript. Answer: MedlinePlus offers a variety of RSS feeds to suit your particular interests. You can subscribe to general interest feeds that ...

  5. Transgender Phonosurgery: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.

    PubMed

    Song, Tara Elena; Jiang, Nancy

    2017-05-01

    Objectives Different surgical techniques have been described in the literature to increase vocal pitch. The purpose of this study is to systematically review these surgeries and perform a meta-analysis to determine which technique increases pitch the most. Data Sources CINAHL, Cochrane, Embase, Medline, PubMed, and Science Direct. Review Methods A systematic review and meta-analysis of the literature was performed using the CINAHL, Cochrane, Embase, Medline, PubMed, and Science Direct databases. Studies were eligible for inclusion if they evaluated pitch-elevating phonosurgical techniques in live humans and performed pre- and postoperative acoustic analysis. Data were gathered regarding surgical technique, pre- and postoperative fundamental frequencies, perioperative care measures, and complications. Results Twenty-nine studies were identified. After applying inclusion and exclusion criteria, a total of 13 studies were included in the meta-analysis. Mechanisms of pitch elevation included increasing vocal cord tension (cricothyroid approximation), shortening the vocal cord length (cold knife glottoplasty, laser-shortening glottoplasty), and decreasing mass (laser reduction glottoplasty). The most common interventions were shortening techniques and cricothyroid approximation (6 studies each). The largest increase in fundamental frequency was seen with techniques that shortened the vocal cords. Preoperative speech therapy, postoperative voice rest, and reporting of patient satisfaction were inconsistent. Many of the studies were limited by low power and short length of follow-up. Conclusions Multiple techniques for elevation of vocal pitch exist, but vocal cord shortening procedures appear to result in the largest increase in fundamental frequency.

  6. Subscribe to NIH MedlinePlus the Magazine

    MedlinePlus

    ... turn Javascript on. Subscribe to NIH MedlinePlus the magazine NIH MedlinePlus the magazine is published quarterly, in print and on the ... up for a free subscription to NIH MedlinePlus Magazine. Librarians may order this magazine in bulk . Please ...

  7. Archie Cochrane and his legacy. An internal challenge to physicians' autonomy?

    PubMed

    Hill, G B

    2000-12-01

    Archibald L. (Archie) Cochrane was born in 1909 into a wealthy Scottish family, from which he inherited the advantage of a private income and the disadvantage of porphyria. Though a brilliant student, his medical training was interrupted by a lengthy psychoanalysis in Europe, and by service in a field ambulance unit in the Spanish Civil War. Eventually Cochrane qualified in medicine in 1938 and joined the R.A.M.C. in 1939. He was taken prisoner in Crete in 1941 and served the rest of the war as medical officer in various POW camps. Cochrane's post-war career with the Medical Research Council as a field epidemiologist in South Wales earned him the respect and admiration of a generation of British epidemiologists. However, Cochrane's international reputation is not based on his achievements as an epidemiologist, but on his 1971 monograph "Effectiveness and Efficiency. Random Reflections on Health Services," a biting scientific critique of medical practice. Cochrane died in 1988, but his name lives on in the Cochrane Collaboration, a network of researchers devoted to clinical trials, and the torch which he lit had been carried forward by the groups promoting evidence-based medicine. Some have looked askance at these developments, regarding them as a threat to the autonomy of physicians.

  8. Evaluation and management of hemorrhoids: Italian society of colorectal surgery (SICCR) consensus statement.

    PubMed

    Trompetto, M; Clerico, G; Cocorullo, G F; Giordano, P; Marino, F; Martellucci, J; Milito, G; Mistrangelo, M; Ratto, C

    2015-10-01

    Hemorrhoids are one of the most common medical and surgical diseases and the main reason for a visit to a coloproctologist. This consensus statement was drawn up by the Italian society of colorectal surgery in order to provide practice parameters for an accurate assessment of the disease and consequent appropriate treatment. The authors made a careful search in the main databases (MEDLINE, PubMed, Embase and Cochrane), and all results were classified on the basis of the grade of recommendation (A-C) of the American College of Chest Physicians.

  9. NLM MedlinePlus Magazine Team | NIH MedlinePlus the Magazine

    MedlinePlus

    ... Robert George DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS Carolyn Medeiros DIRECTOR, BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT Michele Tezduyar MANAGING EDITOR Emily Poe SENIOR ... MD 20814 CONNECT WITH US Follow us on Facebook Facebook MedlinePlus www.facebook.com/mplus.gov Facebook ...

  10. The first ever Cochrane event in Russia and Russian speaking countries - Cochrane Russia Launch - Evidence-based medicine: Achievements and barriers (QiQUM 2015) International Conference, Kazan, December 7-8, 2015.

    PubMed

    Ziganshina, Liliya Eugenevna; Jørgensen, Karsten Juhl

    2016-01-01

    Kazan hosted Russia's second International Conference QiQUM 2015 on Cochrane evidence for health policy, which was entirely independent of the pharmaceutical or other health industry, bringing together 259 participants from 11 countries and 13 regions of the Russian Federation. The Conference was greeted and endorsed by world leaders in Evidence-based medicine, health and pharmaceutical information, policy and regulation, and the World Health Organization. Participants discussed the professional and social problems arising from biased health information, unethical pharmaceutical promotion, misleading reporting of clinical trials with consequent flaws in health care delivery and the role of Cochrane evidence for informed decisions and better health. The first in history Cochrane workshop, facilitated jointly by experts from Cochrane and the WHO, with 40 participants from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Russia introduced the concept of Cochrane systematic review and the Use of Cochrane evidence in WHO policy setting. Websites document conference materials and provide interface for future collaboration: http://kpfu.ru/biology-medicine/struktura-instituta/kafedry/kfikf/konferenciya/mezhdunarodnaya-konferenciya-39dokazatelnaya.html and http://russia.cochrane.org/news/international-conference.

  11. Virtual reality for stroke rehabilitation: an abridged version of a Cochrane review.

    PubMed

    Laver, K; George, S; Thomas, S; Deutsch, J E; Crotty, M

    2015-08-01

    Virtual reality and interactive video gaming have emerged as new treatment approaches in stroke rehabilitation settings over the last ten years. The primary objective of this review was to determine the effectiveness of virtual reality on upper limb function and activity after stroke. The impact on secondary outcomes including gait, cognitive function and activities of daily living was also assessed. Randomized and quasi-randomized controlled trials comparing virtual reality with an alternative intervention or no intervention were eligible to be included in the review. The authors searched a number of electronic databases including: the Cochrane Stroke Group Trials Register, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, MEDLINE, EMBASE, AMED, CINAHL, PsycINFO, clinical trial registers, reference lists, Dissertation Abstracts and contacted key researchers in the field. Search results were independently examined by two review authors to identify studies meeting the inclusion criteria. A total of 37 randomized or quasi randomized controlled trials with a total of 1019 participants were included in the review. Virtual reality was found to be significantly more effective than conventional therapy in improving upper limb function (standardized mean difference [SMD] 0.28, 95% confidence intervals [CI] 0.08 to 0.49) based on 12 studies and significantly more effective than no therapy in improving upper limber function (SMD 0.44 [95% CI 0.15 to 0.73]) based on nine studies. The use of virtual reality also significantly improved activities of daily living function when compared to more conventional therapy approaches (SMD 0.43 [95% CI 0.18 to 0.69]) based on eight studies. While there are a large number of studies assessing the efficacy of virtual reality they tend to be small and many are at risk of bias. While there is evidence to support the use of virtual reality intervention as part of upper limb training programs, more research is required to determine whether it

  12. Has Embase replaced MEDLINE since coverage expansion?

    PubMed

    Lam, Michael Thomas; De Longhi, Christina; Turnbull, Joseph; Lam, Helen Rose; Besa, Reena

    2018-04-01

    The research tested the authors' hypothesis that more researchers from the academic medicine community in the United States and Canada with institutional access to Embase had started using Embase to replace MEDLINE since Embase was expanded in 2010 to cover all MEDLINE records. We contacted libraries of 140 and 17 medical schools in the United States and Canada, respectively, to confirm their subscriptions to Embase 5 years before and 5 years after 2010. We searched the names of institutions with confirmed Embase access in Ovid MEDLINE and Embase to retrieve works authored by affiliates of those institutions. We then examined 100 randomly selected records from each of the 5 years before and 5 years after the Embase coverage expansion in 2010. We hypothesized that studies that used Embase but not MEDLINE would increase due to the Embase coverage expansion. The number of studies that used Embase but not MEDLINE did not change between the pre-2010 and post-2010 periods. Our hypothesis was refuted. Studies that used Embase but not MEDLINE did not increase post-2010. Our results suggest the academic medicine community in the United States and Canada that had access did not use Embase to replace MEDLINE, despite the Embase coverage expansion.

  13. Cochrane Rehabilitation Methodology Committee: an international survey of priorities for future work.

    PubMed

    Levack, William M; Meyer, Thorsten; Negrini, Stefano; Malmivaara, Antti

    2017-10-01

    Cochrane Rehabilitation aims to improve the application of evidence-based practice in rehabilitation. It also aims to support Cochrane in the production of reliable, clinically meaningful syntheses of evidence related to the practice of rehabilitation, while accommodating the many methodological challenges facing the field. To this end, Cochrane Rehabilitation established a Methodology Committee to examine, explore and find solutions for the methodological challenges related to evidence synthesis and knowledge translation in rehabilitation. We conducted an international online survey via Cochrane Rehabilitation networks to canvass opinions regarding the future work priorities for this committee and to seek information on people's current capabilities to assist with this work. The survey findings indicated strongest interest in work on how reviewers have interpreted and applied Cochrane methods in reviews on rehabilitation topics in the past, and on gathering a collection of existing publications on review methods for undertaking systematic reviews relevant to rehabilitation. Many people are already interested in contributing to the work of the Methodology Committee and there is a large amount of expertise for this work in the extended Cochrane Rehabilitation network already.

  14. Exercise-Based Cardiac Rehabilitation for Coronary Heart Disease: Cochrane Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

    PubMed

    Anderson, Lindsey; Oldridge, Neil; Thompson, David R; Zwisler, Ann-Dorthe; Rees, Karen; Martin, Nicole; Taylor, Rod S

    2016-01-05

    Although recommended in guidelines for the management of coronary heart disease (CHD), concerns have been raised about the applicability of evidence from existing meta-analyses of exercise-based cardiac rehabilitation (CR). The goal of this study is to update the Cochrane systematic review and meta-analysis of exercise-based CR for CHD. The Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, and Science Citation Index Expanded were searched to July 2014. Retrieved papers, systematic reviews, and trial registries were hand-searched. We included randomized controlled trials with at least 6 months of follow-up, comparing CR to no-exercise controls following myocardial infarction or revascularization, or with a diagnosis of angina pectoris or CHD defined by angiography. Two authors screened titles for inclusion, extracted data, and assessed risk of bias. Studies were pooled using random effects meta-analysis, and stratified analyses were undertaken to examine potential treatment effect modifiers. A total of 63 studies with 14,486 participants with median follow-up of 12 months were included. Overall, CR led to a reduction in cardiovascular mortality (relative risk: 0.74; 95% confidence interval: 0.64 to 0.86) and the risk of hospital admissions (relative risk: 0.82; 95% confidence interval: 0.70 to 0.96). There was no significant effect on total mortality, myocardial infarction, or revascularization. The majority of studies (14 of 20) showed higher levels of health-related quality of life in 1 or more domains following exercise-based CR compared with control subjects. This study confirms that exercise-based CR reduces cardiovascular mortality and provides important data showing reductions in hospital admissions and improvements in quality of life. These benefits appear to be consistent across patients and intervention types and were independent of study quality, setting, and publication date. Copyright © 2016 American College of Cardiology

  15. Effectiveness of Traditional Chinese Acupuncture versus Sham Acupuncture: a Systematic Review.

    PubMed

    Carlos, Luís; Cruz, Lóris Aparecida Prado da; Leopoldo, Vanessa Cristina; Campos, Fabrício Ribeiro de; Almeida, Ana Maria de; Silveira, Renata Cristina de Campos Pereira

    2016-08-15

    to identify and synthesize the evidence from randomized clinical trials that tested the effectiveness of traditional Chinese acupuncture in relation to sham acupuncture for the treatment of hot flashes in menopausal women with breast cancer. systematic review guided by the recommendations of the Cochrane Collaboration. Citations were searched in the following databases: MEDLINE via PubMed, Web of Science, CENTRAL, CINAHL, and LILACS. A combination of the following keywords was used: breast neoplasm, acupuncture, acupuncture therapy, acupuncture points, placebos, sham treatment, hot flashes, hot flushes, menopause, climacteric, and vasomotor symptoms. a total of 272 studies were identified, five of which were selected and analyzed. Slight superiority of traditional acupuncture compared with sham acupuncture was observed; however, there were no strong statistical associations. the evidence gathered was not sufficient to affirm the effectiveness of traditional acupuncture compared with sham acupuncture. identificar e sintetizar as evidências oriundas de ensaios clínicos randomizados que testaram a efetividade da acupuntura tradicional chinesa em relação à sham acupuntura para o tratamento dos fogachos em mulheres com câncer de mama no climatério. revisão sistemática guiada pelas recomendações da Colaboração Cochrane. A busca foi realizada nas bases de dados: MEDLINE via PubMed, Web of Science, CENTRAL Cochrane, CINAHL e LILACS. Adotou-se a combinação dos descritores: breast neoplasm, acupuncture, acupuncture therapy, acupuncture points, placebos, sham treatment, hot flashes, hot flushes, menopause, climacteric, vasomotor symptoms. foram identificados 272 estudos, sendo 5 selecionados e analisados. Foi observada discreta superioridade da acupuntura tradicional em relação à sham, entretanto, sem fortes associações estatísticas. as evidências obtidas não foram suficientes para afirmar quanto à efetividade da acupuntura tradicional em relação

  16. International activity in the Cochrane Collaboration with particular reference to India.

    PubMed

    Allen, Claire; Clarke, Mike; Tharyan, Prathap

    2007-01-01

    The Cochrane Collaboration is the world's largest organization dedicated to preparing, maintaining and promoting the accessibility of systematic reviews of the effects of healthcare interventions. It is an international organization with participants in more than 100 countries. Since the year 2000, a periodic audit has been done to count the number of active members in Cochrane Review Groups, categorized by the countries in which these people are based. At the beginning of 2007, there were more than 15 800 people involved, an increase from about 5500 in 2000. The South Asian Cochrane Network was formed in 2005 to raise awareness about the Cochrane Collaboration and evidence-based practice in South Asia, support review authors and contributors from countries within the region, promote access to The Cochrane Library and advocate high quality research in South Asia. The growth of activity in India has been dramatic, particularly authors of Cochrane reviews and protocols--from just 19 (with 11 authors) in 2000 to 126 (with 78 authors) in 2007. Increasing the uptake of relevant and reliable evidence in healthcare decisions in India and the South Asian region forms the core of the network's strategic plan. The continued growth of contributors from India and South Asia will help ensure that decisions regarding healthcare in the region are informed by reliable and relevant evidence.

  17. Wilms' Tumor: MedlinePlus Health Topic

    MedlinePlus

    ... Articles References and abstracts from MEDLINE/PubMed (National Library of Medicine) Article: Extrarenal teratoma with nephroblastoma in ... MedlinePlus Connect for EHRs For Developers U.S. National Library of Medicine 8600 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, MD 20894 ...

  18. About MedlinePlus

    MedlinePlus

    ... Produced by the National Library of Medicine, the world’s largest medical library, it brings you information about diseases, conditions, and wellness issues in language you can understand. MedlinePlus offers reliable, ...

  19. Cochran Q test with Turbo BASIC.

    PubMed

    Seuc, A H

    1995-01-01

    A microcomputer program written in Turbo BASIC for the sequential application of the Cochran Q test is given. A clinical application where the test is used in order to explore the structure of the agreement between observers is also presented. A program listing is available on request.

  20. GOClonto: an ontological clustering approach for conceptualizing PubMed abstracts.

    PubMed

    Zheng, Hai-Tao; Borchert, Charles; Kim, Hong-Gee

    2010-02-01

    Concurrent with progress in biomedical sciences, an overwhelming of textual knowledge is accumulating in the biomedical literature. PubMed is the most comprehensive database collecting and managing biomedical literature. To help researchers easily understand collections of PubMed abstracts, numerous clustering methods have been proposed to group similar abstracts based on their shared features. However, most of these methods do not explore the semantic relationships among groupings of documents, which could help better illuminate the groupings of PubMed abstracts. To address this issue, we proposed an ontological clustering method called GOClonto for conceptualizing PubMed abstracts. GOClonto uses latent semantic analysis (LSA) and gene ontology (GO) to identify key gene-related concepts and their relationships as well as allocate PubMed abstracts based on these key gene-related concepts. Based on two PubMed abstract collections, the experimental results show that GOClonto is able to identify key gene-related concepts and outperforms the STC (suffix tree clustering) algorithm, the Lingo algorithm, the Fuzzy Ants algorithm, and the clustering based TRS (tolerance rough set) algorithm. Moreover, the two ontologies generated by GOClonto show significant informative conceptual structures.

  1. MedlinePlus Tour

    MedlinePlus

    ... captioning, click the CC button on the lower right-hand corner of the player. Video player keyboard shortcuts Transcript Welcome to MedlinePlus, the consumer health information website from the National Library of ...

  2. Comparison of the efficacy of three PubMed search filters in finding randomized controlled trials to answer clinical questions.

    PubMed

    Yousefi-Nooraie, Reza; Irani, Shirin; Mortaz-Hedjri, Soroush; Shakiba, Behnam

    2013-10-01

    The aim of this study was to compare the performance of three search methods in the retrieval of relevant clinical trials from PubMed to answer specific clinical questions. Included studies of a sample of 100 Cochrane reviews which recorded in PubMed were considered as the reference standard. The search queries were formulated based on the systematic review titles. Precision, recall and number of retrieved records for limiting the results to clinical trial publication type, and using sensitive and specific clinical queries filters were compared. The number of keywords, presence of specific names of intervention and syndrome in the search keywords were used in a model to predict the recalls and precisions. The Clinical queries-sensitive search strategy retrieved the largest number of records (33) and had the highest recall (41.6%) and lowest precision (4.8%). The presence of specific intervention name was the only significant predictor of all recalls and precisions (P = 0.016). The recall and precision of combination of simple clinical search queries and methodological search filters to find clinical trials in various subjects were considerably low. The limit field strategy yielded in higher precision and fewer retrieved records and approximately similar recall, compared with the clinical queries-sensitive strategy. Presence of specific intervention name in the search keywords increased both recall and precision. © 2010 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

  3. Information management and complementary alternative medicine: the anatomy of information about CAMs through PubMed.

    PubMed

    Corrao, Salvatore; Argano, Christiano; Colomba, Daniela; Ippolito, Calogero; Gargano, Vincenzo; Arcoraci, Vincenzo; Licata, Giuseppe

    2013-10-01

    In recent years, there has been a growing interest about complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), and the use of CAM interventions has become more common among people. For these reasons, health professionals must be able to effectively manage information in this field of knowledge according to an evidence-based point of view. This study assessed the anatomy of the available information about CAMs using PubMed, to give practical instructions to manage information in this field. We also analyzed the anatomy of information according to each alternative medicine branch, narrow and broad search methods, subset filters for indexed-for-Medline and non-indexed citations, and different publication types including randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and meta-analyses. Our results demonstrated that the use of CAMs subset (supplied by PubMed search engine) leads to a great number of citations determining an information overload. Our data reveal that it would be more useful to search for the CAM separately, identifying specific items and study design. Moreover, we found the largest number of randomized clinical trials and meta-analyses related to herbal medicine and acupuncture, neither RCTs nor meta-analyses were available for bach and flower remedies, auriculoacupuncture, iridology, and pranotherapy. For the first time, our study gives a comprehensive view of the anatomy of information regarding CAMs and each branch of them. We suggest a methodological approach to face with searching information about this emerging issue from an evidence-based point of view. Finally, our data pointed out some "grey zones" since neither RCTs nor meta-analyses were available for some CAMs.

  4. Automatic inference of indexing rules for MEDLINE.

    PubMed

    Névéol, Aurélie; Shooshan, Sonya E; Claveau, Vincent

    2008-11-19

    Indexing is a crucial step in any information retrieval system. In MEDLINE, a widely used database of the biomedical literature, the indexing process involves the selection of Medical Subject Headings in order to describe the subject matter of articles. The need for automatic tools to assist MEDLINE indexers in this task is growing with the increasing number of publications being added to MEDLINE. In this paper, we describe the use and the customization of Inductive Logic Programming (ILP) to infer indexing rules that may be used to produce automatic indexing recommendations for MEDLINE indexers. Our results show that this original ILP-based approach outperforms manual rules when they exist. In addition, the use of ILP rules also improves the overall performance of the Medical Text Indexer (MTI), a system producing automatic indexing recommendations for MEDLINE. We expect the sets of ILP rules obtained in this experiment to be integrated into MTI.

  5. Cancer--Living with Cancer: MedlinePlus Health Topic

    MedlinePlus

    ... MedlinePlus GO GO About MedlinePlus Site Map FAQs Customer Support Health Topics Drugs & Supplements Videos & Tools Español ... our quality guidelines . About MedlinePlus Site Map FAQs Customer Support Get email updates Subscribe to RSS Follow ...

  6. Soft tissue management for dental implants: what are the most effective techniques? A Cochrane systematic review.

    PubMed

    Esposito, Marco; Maghaireh, Hassan; Grusovin, Maria Gabriella; Ziounas, Ioannis; Worthington, Helen V

    2012-01-01

    This review is based on a Cochrane systematic review entitled 'Interventions for replacing missing teeth: management of soft tissues for dental implants' published in The Cochrane Library (see http:// www.cochrane.org/ for information). Cochrane systematic reviews are regularly updated to include new research, and in response to comments and criticisms from readers. If you wish to comment on this review, please send your comments to the Cochrane website or to Marco Esposito. The Cochrane Library should be consulted for the most recent version of the review. The results of a Cochrane review can be interpreted differently, depending on people's perspectives and circumstances. Please consider the conclusions presented carefully. They are the opinions of the review authors, and are not necessarily shared by the Cochrane Collaboration. To evaluate whether flapless procedures are beneficial for patients and which is the ideal flap design, whether soft tissue correction/augmentation techniques are beneficial for patients and which are the best techniques, whether techniques to increase the peri-implant keratinised mucosa are beneficial for patients and which are the best techniques, and which are the best suturing techniques/ materials. The Cochrane Oral Health Group's Trials Register, CENTRAL, MEDLINE and EMBASE were searched up to the 9th of June 2011 for randomised controlled trials (RCTs) of rootform osseointegrated dental implants, with a follow-up of at least 6 months after function, comparing various techniques to handle soft tissues in relation to dental implants. Primary outcome measures were prosthetic failures, implant failures and biological complications. Screening of eligible studies, assessment of the methodological quality of the trials and data extraction were conducted at least in duplicate and independently by two or more review authors. The statistical unit was the patient and not the prosthesis, the procedure or the implant. RESULTS were expressed

  7. Automatic inference of indexing rules for MEDLINE

    PubMed Central

    Névéol, Aurélie; Shooshan, Sonya E; Claveau, Vincent

    2008-01-01

    Background: Indexing is a crucial step in any information retrieval system. In MEDLINE, a widely used database of the biomedical literature, the indexing process involves the selection of Medical Subject Headings in order to describe the subject matter of articles. The need for automatic tools to assist MEDLINE indexers in this task is growing with the increasing number of publications being added to MEDLINE. Methods: In this paper, we describe the use and the customization of Inductive Logic Programming (ILP) to infer indexing rules that may be used to produce automatic indexing recommendations for MEDLINE indexers. Results: Our results show that this original ILP-based approach outperforms manual rules when they exist. In addition, the use of ILP rules also improves the overall performance of the Medical Text Indexer (MTI), a system producing automatic indexing recommendations for MEDLINE. Conclusion: We expect the sets of ILP rules obtained in this experiment to be integrated into MTI. PMID:19025687

  8. MEDLINE (MEDLARS ONLINE)

    EPA Science Inventory

    MEDLINE (MEDlars onLINE) is the National Library of Medicines (NLM) premier bibliographic database covering the fields of medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, the health care system, and the preclinical sciences. It contains bibliographic citations (e.g., authors, ...

  9. Lost in translation? A multilingual Query Builder improves the quality of PubMed queries: a randomised controlled trial.

    PubMed

    Schuers, Matthieu; Joulakian, Mher; Kerdelhué, Gaetan; Segas, Léa; Grosjean, Julien; Darmoni, Stéfan J; Griffon, Nicolas

    2017-07-03

    MEDLINE is the most widely used medical bibliographic database in the world. Most of its citations are in English and this can be an obstacle for some researchers to access the information the database contains. We created a multilingual query builder to facilitate access to the PubMed subset using a language other than English. The aim of our study was to assess the impact of this multilingual query builder on the quality of PubMed queries for non-native English speaking physicians and medical researchers. A randomised controlled study was conducted among French speaking general practice residents. We designed a multi-lingual query builder to facilitate information retrieval, based on available MeSH translations and providing users with both an interface and a controlled vocabulary in their own language. Participating residents were randomly allocated either the French or the English version of the query builder. They were asked to translate 12 short medical questions into MeSH queries. The main outcome was the quality of the query. Two librarians blind to the arm independently evaluated each query, using a modified published classification that differentiated eight types of errors. Twenty residents used the French version of the query builder and 22 used the English version. 492 queries were analysed. There were significantly more perfect queries in the French group vs. the English group (respectively 37.9% vs. 17.9%; p < 0.01). It took significantly more time for the members of the English group than the members of the French group to build each query, respectively 194 sec vs. 128 sec; p < 0.01. This multi-lingual query builder is an effective tool to improve the quality of PubMed queries in particular for researchers whose first language is not English.

  10. MedlinePlus FAQ: Will MedlinePlus work on my mobile device?

    MedlinePlus

    ... mobile.html Question: Will MedlinePlus work on my mobile device? To use the sharing features on this page, ... Some video content might not play on your mobile device. See our FAQ on playing videos on phones ...

  11. Herbal medicine for low back pain: a Cochrane review.

    PubMed

    Gagnier, Joel J; van Tulder, Maurits W; Berman, Brian; Bombardier, Claire

    2007-01-01

    A systematic review of randomized controlled trials. To determine the effectiveness of herbal medicine compared with placebo, no intervention, or "standard/accepted/conventional treatments" for nonspecific low back pain. Low back pain is a common condition and a substantial economic burden in industrialized societies. A large proportion of patients with chronic low back pain use complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) and/or visit CAM practitioners. Several herbal medicines have been purported for use in low back pain. The following databases were searched: Medline (1966 to April 2003), Embase (1980 to April 2003), Cochrane Controlled Trials Register (Issue 1, 2003), and Cochrane Complementary Medicine (CM) field Trials Register. Additionally, reference lists in review articles, guidelines, and in the retrieved trials were checked. Randomized controlled trials (RCTs), using adults (>18 years of age) suffering from acute, subacute, or chronic nonspecific low back pain. Types of interventions included herbal medicines defined as a plant that is used for medicinal purposes in any form. Primary outcome measures were pain and function. Two reviewers (J.J.G. and M.W.T.) conducted electronic searches in all databases. One reviewer (J.J.G.) contacted content experts and acquired relevant citations. Authors, title, subject headings, publication type, and abstract of the isolated studies were downloaded or a hard copy was retrieved. Methodologic quality and clinical relevance were assessed separately by two individuals (J.J.G. and M.W.T.). Disagreements were resolved by consensus. Ten trials were included in this review. Two high-quality trials utilizing Harpagophytum procumbens (Devil's claw) found strong evidence for short-term improvements in pain and rescue medication for daily doses standardized to 50 mg or 100 mg harpagoside with another high-quality trial demonstrating relative equivalence to 12.5 mg per day of rofecoxib. Two moderate-quality trials utilizing

  12. Diagnostic accuracy and measurement sensitivity of digital models for orthodontic purposes: A systematic review.

    PubMed

    Rossini, Gabriele; Parrini, Simone; Castroflorio, Tommaso; Deregibus, Andrea; Debernardi, Cesare L

    2016-02-01

    Our objective was to assess the accuracy, validity, and reliability of measurements obtained from virtual dental study models compared with those obtained from plaster models. PubMed, PubMed Central, National Library of Medicine Medline, Embase, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Clinical trials, Web of Knowledge, Scopus, Google Scholar, and LILACs were searched from January 2000 to November 2014. A grading system described by the Swedish Council on Technology Assessment in Health Care and the Cochrane tool for risk of bias assessment were used to rate the methodologic quality of the articles. Thirty-five relevant articles were selected. The methodologic quality was high. No significant differences were observed for most of the studies in all the measured parameters, with the exception of the American Board of Orthodontics Objective Grading System. Digital models are as reliable as traditional plaster models, with high accuracy, reliability, and reproducibility. Landmark identification, rather than the measuring device or the software, appears to be the greatest limitation. Furthermore, with their advantages in terms of cost, time, and space required, digital models could be considered the new gold standard in current practice. Copyright © 2016 American Association of Orthodontists. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  13. Bosnian and Herzegovinian medical scientists in PubMed database.

    PubMed

    Masic, Izet

    2013-01-01

    In this paper it is shortly presented PubMed as one of the most important on-line databases of the scientific biomedical literature. Also, the author has analyzed the most cited authors, professors of the medical faculties in Bosnia and Herzegovina, from the published papers in the biomedical journals abstracted and indexed in PubMed.

  14. Semantic MEDLINE for Discovery Browsing: Using Semantic Predications and the Literature-Based Discovery Paradigm to Elucidate a Mechanism for the Obesity Paradox

    PubMed Central

    Cairelli, Michael J.; Miller, Christopher M.; Fiszman, Marcelo; Workman, T. Elizabeth; Rindflesch, Thomas C.

    2013-01-01

    Applying the principles of literature-based discovery (LBD), we elucidate the paradox that obesity is beneficial in critical care despite contributing to disease generally. Our approach enhances a previous extension to LBD, called “discovery browsing,” and is implemented using Semantic MEDLINE, which summarizes the results of a PubMed search into an interactive graph of semantic predications. The methodology allows a user to construct argumentation underpinning an answer to a biomedical question by engaging the user in an iterative process between system output and user knowledge. Components of the Semantic MEDLINE output graph identified as “interesting” by the user both contribute to subsequent searches and are constructed into a logical chain of relationships constituting an explanatory network in answer to the initial question. Based on this methodology we suggest that phthalates leached from plastic in critical care interventions activate PPAR gamma, which is anti-inflammatory and abundant in obese patients. PMID:24551329

  15. [Integrating nursing care into the Cochrane Collaboration].

    PubMed

    Pearson, Alan

    2012-12-01

    The Cochrane Collaboration holds a prominent position in Evidence-Based Practice. Since 2009, this organisation has created a specific area reserved for nursing care. Anyone needing nursing evidence, or wishing to produce some, can obtain useful resources from the Collaboration.

  16. Incidence of neoplasms in the most prevalent autoimmune rheumatic diseases: a systematic review.

    PubMed

    Machado, Roberta Ismael Lacerda; Braz, Alessandra de Sousa; Freire, Eutilia Andrade Medeiros

    2014-01-01

    This article is a systematic review of the literature about the coexistence of cancer and autoimmune rheumatic diseases, their main associations, cancers and possible risk factors associated, with emphasis on existing population-based studies, besides checking the relation of this occur with the use of the drugs used in the treatment of autoimmune diseases. A search was conducted of scientific articles indexed in the Cochrane / BVS, Pubmed / Medline and Scielo / Lilacs in the period from 2002 to 2012. Also consulted was the IB-ICT (Brazilian digital library of theses and Masters), with descriptors in Portuguese and English for "Systemic sclerosis", "Rheumatoid Arthritis", " Systemic Lupus Erythematosus" and "Sjögren's syndrome", correlating each one with the descriptor AND "neoplasms". The results showed that in the database IBICT a thesis and a dissertation for the descriptor SLE met the inclusion criteria, none met RA one thesis to SS. Lilacs in the database/Scielo found two articles on "Rheumatoid Arthritis" AND "neoplasms". In Pubmed/Medline the inicial search resulted in 118 articles, and 41 were selected. The review noted the relationship between cancer and autoimmune rheumatic diseases, as well as a risk factor for protection, although the pathophysiological mechanisms are not known.

  17. Research synthesis and dissemination as a bridge to knowledge management: the Cochrane Collaboration.

    PubMed Central

    Volmink, Jimmy; Siegfried, Nandi; Robertson, Katharine; Gülmezoglu, A. Metin

    2004-01-01

    In the current information age, research synthesis is a particularly useful tool for keeping track of scientific research and making sense of the large volumes of frequently conflicting data derived from primary studies. The Cochrane Collaboration is a global initiative "to help people make well-informed decisions about health care by preparing, maintaining and promoting the accessibility of systematic reviews of the effects of healthcare interventions". In this paper we set the work of the Cochrane Collaboration in historical perspective, explain what a Cochrane review is, and describe initiatives for promoting worldwide dissemination of synthesized information. We also consider emerging evidence of the Cochrane Collaboration's impact on health-care practice, policy, research and education. Finally, we highlight the need for increased investment in the preparation and maintenance of Cochrane reviews, particularly those that address health issues that are relevant to people living in low- and middle-income countries. PMID:15643800

  18. MedlinePlus FAQ: Listing Your Web Site

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  20. MedlinePlus FAQ: Disease or Condition Information

    MedlinePlus

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  1. Performance appraisal of online MEDLINE access routes.

    PubMed Central

    Walker, C. J.; McKibbon, K. A.; Haynes, R. B.; Johnston, M. E.

    1992-01-01

    OBJECTIVE: To compare the performance and cost of 11 online MEDLINE systems with MEDLINE at Elhill. DESIGN: Comparative study. SYSTEMS: Eleven online daytime systems commercially available in North America offering the MEDLINE database. MEASURES: Number of relevant citations, number of irrelevant citations, proportion of searches producing no relevant citations and cost per relevant citation were analyzed for each system. Relevance and cost for each system were compared with direct searching of MEDLINE through NLM for librarian and clinician search strategies for 18 clinical questions. The citations retrieved by both strategies were pooled and rated for relevance on a 7-point scale. RESULTS: Numbers of relevant and irrelevant citations and cost per relevant citation were higher for clinician searches than librarian searches, reflecting the higher total number of citations retrieved by the clinician approaches. A lower proportion of clinician searches produced no relevant citations than librarian searches. CONCLUSIONS: Eleven daytime MEDLINE systems performed similarly in terms of retrieval and cost within similar searching groups. Clinicians, however, tended to capture larger overall retrievals resulting in higher numbers of relevant and irrelevant citations than librarians. PMID:1482922

  2. MEDLINE versus EMBASE and CINAHL for telemedicine searches.

    PubMed

    Bahaadinbeigy, Kambiz; Yogesan, Kanagasingam; Wootton, Richard

    2010-10-01

    Researchers in the domain of telemedicine throughout the world tend to search multiple bibliographic databases to retrieve the highest possible number of publications when conducting review projects. Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System Online (MEDLINE), Excerpta Medica Database (EMBASE), and Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL) are three popular databases in the discipline of biomedicine that are used for conducting reviews. Access to the MEDLINE database is free and easy, whereas EMBASE and CINAHL are not free and sometimes not easy to access for researchers in small research centers. This project sought to compare MEDLINE with EMBASE and CINAHL to estimate what proportion of potentially relevant publications would be missed when only MEDLINE is used in a review project, in comparison to when EMBASE and CINAHL are also used. Twelve simple keywords relevant to 12 different telemedicine applications were searched using all three databases, and the results were compared. About 9%-18% of potentially relevant articles would have been missed if MEDLINE had been the only database used. It is preferable if all three or more databases are used when conducting a review in telemedicine. Researchers from developing countries or small research institutions could rely on only MEDLINE, but they would loose 9%-18% of the potentially relevant publications. Searching MEDLINE alone is not ideal, but in a resource-constrained situation, it is definitely better than nothing.

  3. MedlinePlus Marks its 15th Anniversary

    MedlinePlus

    ... at or near the top of the American Customer Satisfaction Index for government news sites. In 2010, MedlinePlus introduced the MedlinePlus Connect service that allows electronic health record systems to link from ... updates Subscribe to RSS Follow ...

  4. MedlinePlus FAQ: Is audio description available for videos on MedlinePlus?

    MedlinePlus

    ... audiodescription.html Question: Is audio description available for videos on MedlinePlus? To use the sharing features on ... page, please enable JavaScript. Answer: Audio description of videos helps make the content of videos accessible to ...

  5. Evidence-based topical treatments for tinea cruris and tinea corporis: a summary of a Cochrane systematic review.

    PubMed

    van Zuuren, E J; Fedorowicz, Z; El-Gohary, M

    2015-03-01

    Tinea cruris and tinea corporis are common fungal infections. Most can be treated with a variety of topical antifungals. This review aimed to assess the evidence for the effectiveness and safety of topical treatments for tinea cruris and tinea corporis. Searches included the Cochrane Skin Group Specialised Register, CENTRAL in The Cochrane Library, Medline, Embase, LILACS and ongoing trials registries (August 2013). One hundred and twenty-nine randomized controlled trials (RCTs) with 18 086 participants evaluated a range of interventions - mostly azoles. Pooling of data for several outcomes was only possible for two individual treatments. In five studies, terbinafine showed a statistically significant higher clinical cure rate compared with placebo [risk ratio (RR) 4·51, 95% confidence interval (CI) 3·10-6·56]. Data for mycological cure could not be pooled owing to substantial heterogeneity. Across three studies, mycological cure rates favoured naftifine (1%) compared with placebo (RR 2·38, 95% CI 1·80-3·14) but the quality of the evidence was low. Combinations of azoles with corticosteroids were slightly more effective than azoles for clinical cure, but there was no statistically significant difference with regard to mycological cure. Sixty-five studies were assessed as 'unclear' and 64 as being at 'high risk' of bias; many were over 20 years old, and most were poorly designed and inadequately reported. Although most active interventions showed sufficient therapeutic effect, this review highlights the need for further, high-quality, adequately powered RCTs to evaluate the effects of these interventions, which can ultimately provide reliable evidence to inform clinical decision making. © 2014 British Association of Dermatologists.

  6. Converting systematic reviews to Cochrane format: a cross-sectional survey of Australian authors of systematic reviews

    PubMed Central

    Piehl, Janet H; Green, Sally; McDonald, Steve

    2003-01-01

    Background Despite the growing reputation and subject coverage of the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, many systematic reviews continue to be published solely in paper-based health care journals. This study was designed to determine why authors choose to publish their systematic reviews outside of the Cochrane Collaboration and if they might be interested in converting their reviews to Cochrane format for publication in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. Methods Cross-sectional survey of Australian primary authors of systematic reviews not published on the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews identified from the Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effectiveness. Results We identified 88 systematic reviews from the Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effectiveness with an Australian as the primary author. We surveyed 52 authors for whom valid contact information was available. The response rate was 88 per cent (46/52). Ten authors replied without completing the survey, leaving 36 valid surveys for analysis. The most frequently cited reasons for not undertaking a Cochrane review were: lack of time (78%), the need to undergo specific Cochrane training (46%), unwillingness to update reviews (36%), difficulties with the Cochrane process (26%) and the review topic already registered with the Cochrane Collaboration (21%). (Percentages based on completed responses to individual questions.) Nearly half the respondents would consider converting their review to Cochrane format. Dedicated time emerged as the most important factor in facilitating the potential conversion process. Other factors included navigating the Cochrane system, assistance with updating and financial support. Eighty-six per cent were willing to have their review converted to Cochrane format by another author. Conclusion Time required to complete a Cochrane review and the need for specific training are the primary reasons why some authors publish systematic reviews outside of the

  7. CINAHL and MEDLINE: a comparison of indexing practices.

    PubMed

    Brenner, S H; McKinin, E J

    1989-10-01

    A random sample of fifty nursing articles indexed in both MEDLINE and CINAHL (NURSING & ALLIED HEALTH) during 1986 was used for comparing indexing practices. Indexing was analyzed by counting the number of major descriptors, the number of major and minor descriptors, the number of indexing access points, the number of common indexing access points, and the number and type of unique indexing access points. The study results indicate: there are few differences in the number of major descriptors used, MEDLINE uses almost twice as many descriptors, MEDLINE has almost twice as many indexing access points, and MEDLINE and CINAHL provide few common access points.

  8. CINAHL and MEDLINE: a comparison of indexing practices.

    PubMed Central

    Brenner, S H; McKinin, E J

    1989-01-01

    A random sample of fifty nursing articles indexed in both MEDLINE and CINAHL (NURSING & ALLIED HEALTH) during 1986 was used for comparing indexing practices. Indexing was analyzed by counting the number of major descriptors, the number of major and minor descriptors, the number of indexing access points, the number of common indexing access points, and the number and type of unique indexing access points. The study results indicate: there are few differences in the number of major descriptors used, MEDLINE uses almost twice as many descriptors, MEDLINE has almost twice as many indexing access points, and MEDLINE and CINAHL provide few common access points. PMID:2676049

  9. Gaps in affiliation indexing in Scopus and PubMed.

    PubMed

    Schmidt, Cynthia M; Cox, Roxanne; Fial, Alissa V; Hartman, Teresa L; Magee, Martha L

    2016-04-01

    The authors sought to determine whether unexpected gaps existed in Scopus's author affiliation indexing of publications written by the University of Nebraska Medical Center or Nebraska Medicine (UNMC/NM) authors during 2014. First, we compared Scopus affiliation identifier search results to PubMed affiliation keyword search results. Then, we searched Scopus using affiliation keywords (UNMC, etc.) and compared the results to PubMed affiliation keyword and Scopus affiliation identifier searches. We found that Scopus's records for approximately 7% of UNMC/NM authors' publications lacked appropriate UNMC/NM author affiliation identifiers, and many journals' publishers were supplying incomplete author affiliation information to PubMed. Institutions relying on Scopus to track their impact should determine whether Scopus's affiliation identifiers will, in fact, identify all articles published by their authors and investigators.

  10. Gaps in affiliation indexing in Scopus and PubMed

    PubMed Central

    Schmidt, Cynthia M.; Cox, Roxanne; Fial, Alissa V.; Hartman, Teresa L.; Magee, Martha L.

    2016-01-01

    Objective The authors sought to determine whether unexpected gaps existed in Scopus's author affiliation indexing of publications written by the University of Nebraska Medical Center or Nebraska Medicine (UNMC/NM) authors during 2014. Methods First, we compared Scopus affiliation identifier search results to PubMed affiliation keyword search results. Then, we searched Scopus using affiliation keywords (UNMC, etc.) and compared the results to PubMed affiliation keyword and Scopus affiliation identifier searches. Results We found that Scopus's records for approximately 7% of UNMC/NM authors' publications lacked appropriate UNMC/NM author affiliation identifiers, and many journals' publishers were supplying incomplete author affiliation information to PubMed. Conclusions Institutions relying on Scopus to track their impact should determine whether Scopus's affiliation identifiers will, in fact, identify all articles published by their authors and investigators. PMID:27076801

  11. Medical Encyclopedia: MedlinePlus

    MedlinePlus

    ... Duplication for commercial use must be authorized in writing by ADAM Health Solutions. About MedlinePlus Site Map FAQs Customer Support Get email updates Subscribe to RSS Follow us Disclaimers Copyright ...

  12. Hold your horses: A comparison of human laryngomalacia with analogous equine airway pathology.

    PubMed

    Lawrence, Rachael J; Butterell, Matthew J; Constable, James D; Daniel, Matija

    2018-02-01

    Laryngomalacia is the most common cause of stridor in infants. Dynamic airway collapse is also a well-recognised entity in horses and an important cause of surgical veterinary intervention. We compare the aetiology, clinical features and management of human laryngomalacia with equine dynamic airway collapse. A structured review of the PubMed, the Ovid Medline and the Cochrane Collaboration databases (Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, Cochrane Database of Systemic Reviews). There are numerous equine conditions that cause dynamic airway collapse defined specifically by the anatomical structures involved. Axial Deviation of the Aryepiglottic Folds (ADAF) is the condition most clinically analogous to laryngomalacia in humans, and is likewise most prevalent in the immature equine airway. Both conditions are managed either conservatively, or if symptoms require it, with surgical intervention. The operative procedures performed for ADAF and laryngomalacia are technically comparable. Dynamic collapse of the equine larynx, especially ADAF, is clinically similar to human laryngomalacia, and both are treated in a similar fashion. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  13. PubMed enhancements: fulfilling the promise of a great product.

    PubMed

    Schott, Michael J

    2004-01-01

    There have been many recent changes to PubMed to enhance its usefulness. Those changes include: LinkOut Libraries (local holding field), PubMed Central (full-text articles archived by the National Library of Medicine), and LinkOut (access to full-text articles right from the PubMed citation). Medical librarians should be aware of how these features work to best assist their clients. These new features offer the possibility of true desktop access for library patrons. Not only will patrons appreciate these new features, but their use in libraries will literally change what we do, who does it, and how it is done.

  14. MedlinePlus FAQ: Framing

    MedlinePlus

    ... URL of this page: https://medlineplus.gov/faq/framing.html I'd like to link to MedlinePlus, ... M. encyclopedia. Our license agreements do not permit framing of their content from our site. For more ...

  15. How Complementary and Alternative Medicine Practitioners Use PubMed

    PubMed Central

    Quint-Rapoport, Mia

    2007-01-01

    Background PubMed is the largest bibliographic index in the life sciences. It is freely available online and is used by professionals and the public to learn more about medical research. While primarily intended to serve researchers, PubMed provides an array of tools and services that can help a wider readership in the location, comprehension, evaluation, and utilization of medical research. Objective This study sought to establish the potential contributions made by a range of PubMed tools and services to the use of the database by complementary and alternative medicine practitioners. Methods In this study, 10 chiropractors, 7 registered massage therapists, and a homeopath (N = 18), 11 with prior research training and 7 without, were taken through a 2-hour introductory session with PubMed. The 10 PubMed tools and services considered in this study can be divided into three functions: (1) information retrieval (Boolean Search, Limits, Related Articles, Author Links, MeSH), (2) information access (Publisher Link, LinkOut, Bookshelf ), and (3) information management (History, Send To, Email Alert). Participants were introduced to between six and 10 of these tools and services. The participants were asked to provide feedback on the value of each tool or service in terms of their information needs, which was ranked as positive, positive with emphasis, negative, or indifferent. Results The participants in this study expressed an interest in the three types of PubMed tools and services (information retrieval, access, and management), with less well-regarded tools including MeSH Database and Bookshelf. In terms of their comprehension of the research, the tools and services led the participants to reflect on their understanding as well as their critical reading and use of the research. There was universal support among the participants for greater access to complete articles, beyond the approximately 15% that are currently open access. The abstracts provided by PubMed were

  16. Towards core outcome set (COS) development: a follow-up descriptive survey of outcomes in Cochrane reviews.

    PubMed

    Wuytack, Francesca; Smith, Valerie; Clarke, Mike; Williamson, Paula; Gargon, Elizabeth

    2015-05-19

    A core outcome set (COS) can address problems of outcome heterogeneity and outcome reporting bias in trials and systematic reviews, including Cochrane reviews, helping to reduce waste. One of the aims of the international Core Outcome Measures in Effectiveness Trials (COMET) Initiative is to link the development and use of COS with the outcomes specified and reported in Cochrane reviews, including the outcomes listed in the summary of findings (SoF) tables. As part of this work, an earlier exploratory survey of the outcomes of newly published 2007 and 2011 Cochrane reviews was performed. This survey examined the use of COS, the variety of specified outcomes, and outcome reporting in Cochrane reviews by Cochrane Review Group (CRG). To examine changes over time and to explore outcomes that were repeatedly specified over time in Cochrane reviews by CRG, we conducted a follow-up survey of outcomes in 2013 Cochrane reviews. A descriptive survey of outcomes in Cochrane reviews that were first published in 2013. Outcomes specified in the methods sections and reported in the results section of the Cochrane reviews were examined by CRG. We also explored the uptake of SoF tables, the number of outcomes included in these, and the quality of the evidence for the outcomes. Across the 50 CRGs, 375 Cochrane reviews that included at least one study specified a total of 3142 outcomes. Of these outcomes, 32 % (1008) were not reported in the results section of these reviews. For 23 % (233) of these non-reported outcomes, we did not find any reason in the text of the review for this non-report. Fifty-seven percent (216/375) of reviews included a SoF table. The proportion of specified outcomes that were reported in Cochrane reviews had increased in 2013 (68 %) compared to 2007 (61 %) and 2011 (65 %). Importantly, 2013 Cochrane reviews that did not report specified outcomes were twice as likely to provide an explanation for why the outcome was not reported. There has been an increased

  17. The inclusion of an online journal in PubMed central - a difficult path.

    PubMed

    Grech, Victor

    2016-01-01

    The indexing of a journal in a prominent database (such as PubMed) is an important imprimatur. Journals accepted for inclusion in PubMed Central (PMC) are automatically indexed in PubMed but must provide the entire contents of their publications as XML-tagged (Extensible Markup Language) data files compliant with PubMed's document type definition (DTD). This paper describes the various attempts that the journal Images in Paediatric Cardiology made in its efforts to convert the journal contents (including all of the extant backlog) to PMC-compliant XML for archiving and indexing in PubMed after the journal was accepted for inclusion by the database.

  18. [Neuromuscular electric stimulation therapy in otorhinolaryngology].

    PubMed

    Miller, S; Kühn, D; Jungheim, M; Schwemmle, C; Ptok, M

    2014-02-01

    Animal experiments have shown that after specific nerve traumatization, neuromuscular electrostimulation (NMES) can promote nerve regeneration and reduce synkinesia without negatively interfering with normal regeneration processes. NMES is used routinely in physical rehabilitation medicine. This systematic literature search in the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, the DAHTA database, the Health Technology Assessment Database and MEDLINE or PubMed considered studies on the use of NMES in otorhinolaryngology that have been published in German or English. The search identified 180 studies. These were evaluated and relevant studies were included in the further evaluation. In the fields of otorhinolaryngology and phoniatry/paediatric audiology, clinical studies investigating the effects of NMES on facial and laryngeal paresis, as well as dysphonia and dysphagia have been carried out. The evidence collected to date is encouraging; particularly for the treatment of certain forms of dysphagia and laryngeal paresis.

  19. Economics methods in Cochrane systematic reviews of health promotion and public health related interventions

    PubMed Central

    Shemilt, Ian; Mugford, Miranda; Drummond, Michael; Eisenstein, Eric; Mallender, Jacqueline; McDaid, David; Vale, Luke; Walker, Damian

    2006-01-01

    Background Provision of evidence on costs alongside evidence on the effects of interventions can enhance the relevance of systematic reviews to decision-making. However, patterns of use of economics methods alongside systematic review remain unclear. Reviews of evidence on the effects of interventions are published by both the Cochrane and Campbell Collaborations. Although it is not a requirement that Cochrane or Campbell Reviews should consider economic aspects of interventions, many do. This study aims to explore and describe approaches to incorporating economics methods in a selection of Cochrane systematic reviews in the area of health promotion and public health, to help inform development of methodological guidance on economics for reviewers. Methods The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews was searched using a search strategy for potential economic evaluation studies. We included current Cochrane reviews and review protocols retrieved using the search that are also identified as relevant to health promotion or public health topics. A reviewer extracted data which describe the economics components of included reviews. Extracted data were summarised in tables and analysed qualitatively. Results Twenty-one completed Cochrane reviews and seven review protocols met inclusion criteria. None incorporate formal economic evaluation methods. Ten completed reviews explicitly aim to incorporate economics studies and data. There is a lack of transparent reporting of methods underpinning the incorporation of economics studies and data. Some reviews are likely to exclude useful economics studies and data due to a failure to incorporate search strategies tailored to the retrieval of such data or use of key specialist databases, and application of inclusion criteria designed for effectiveness studies. Conclusion There is a need for consistency and transparency in the reporting and conduct of the economics components of Cochrane reviews, as well as regular dialogue between

  20. Economics methods in Cochrane systematic reviews of health promotion and public health related interventions.

    PubMed

    Shemilt, Ian; Mugford, Miranda; Drummond, Michael; Eisenstein, Eric; Mallender, Jacqueline; McDaid, David; Vale, Luke; Walker, Damian

    2006-11-15

    Provision of evidence on costs alongside evidence on the effects of interventions can enhance the relevance of systematic reviews to decision-making. However, patterns of use of economics methods alongside systematic review remain unclear. Reviews of evidence on the effects of interventions are published by both the Cochrane and Campbell Collaborations. Although it is not a requirement that Cochrane or Campbell Reviews should consider economic aspects of interventions, many do. This study aims to explore and describe approaches to incorporating economics methods in a selection of Cochrane systematic reviews in the area of health promotion and public health, to help inform development of methodological guidance on economics for reviewers. The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews was searched using a search strategy for potential economic evaluation studies. We included current Cochrane reviews and review protocols retrieved using the search that are also identified as relevant to health promotion or public health topics. A reviewer extracted data which describe the economics components of included reviews. Extracted data were summarised in tables and analysed qualitatively. Twenty-one completed Cochrane reviews and seven review protocols met inclusion criteria. None incorporate formal economic evaluation methods. Ten completed reviews explicitly aim to incorporate economics studies and data. There is a lack of transparent reporting of methods underpinning the incorporation of economics studies and data. Some reviews are likely to exclude useful economics studies and data due to a failure to incorporate search strategies tailored to the retrieval of such data or use of key specialist databases, and application of inclusion criteria designed for effectiveness studies. There is a need for consistency and transparency in the reporting and conduct of the economics components of Cochrane reviews, as well as regular dialogue between Cochrane reviewers and economists to

  1. Combating HIV/AIDS | NIH MedlinePlus the Magazine

    MedlinePlus

    Skip to main content NIH MedlinePlus the Magazine NIH MedlinePlus Salud Download the Current Issue PDF [3.1 mb] Trusted Health Information from the National Institutes of Health Home Current Issue ...

  2. Evidence from the Cochrane Collaboration for Traditional Chinese Medicine Therapies

    PubMed Central

    Wieland, Susan; Kimbrough, Elizabeth; Cheng, Ker; Berman, Brian M.

    2009-01-01

    Abstract Background The Cochrane Collaboration, an international not-for-profit organization that prepares and maintains systematic reviews of randomized trials of health care therapies, has produced reviews summarizing much of the evidence on Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). Our objective was to review the evidence base according to Cochrane systematic reviews. Methods In order to detect reviews focusing on TCM, we searched the titles and abstracts of all reviews in Issue 4, 2008 of the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. For each review, we extracted data on the number of trials included and the total number of participants. We provided an indication of the strength of the review findings by assessing the reviewers' abstract conclusions statement. We supplemented our assessment of the abstract conclusions statements with a listing of the comparisons and outcomes showing statistically significant meta-analyses results. Results We identified 70 Cochrane systematic reviews of TCM, primarily acupuncture (n = 26) and Chinese herbal medicine (n = 42), and 1 each of moxibustion and t'ai chi. Nineteen (19) of 26 acupuncture reviews and 22/42 herbal medicine reviews concluded that there was not enough good quality trial evidence to make any conclusion about the efficacy of the evaluated treatment, while the remaining 7 acupuncture and 20 herbal medicine reviews and each of the moxibustion and t'ai chi reviews indicated a suggestion of benefit, which was qualified by a caveat about the poor quality and quantity of studies. Most reviews included many distinct interventions, controls, outcomes, and populations, and a large number of different comparisons were made, each with a distinct forest plot. Conclusions Most Cochrane systematic reviews of TCM are inconclusive, due specifically to the poor methodology and heterogeneity of the studies reviewed. Some systematic reviews provide preliminary evidence of Chinese medicine's benefits to certain patient populations

  3. Intervention quality is not routinely assessed in Cochrane systematic reviews of radiation therapy interventions.

    PubMed

    Abdul Rahim, Mohamad R; James, Melissa L; Hickey, Brigid E

    2017-10-01

    The aim of this study was to maximise the benefits from clinical trials involving technological interventions such as radiation therapy. High compliance to the quality assurance protocols is crucial. We assessed whether the quality of radiation therapy intervention was evaluated in Cochrane systematic reviews. We searched 416 published Cochrane systematic reviews and identified 67 Cochrane systematic reviews that investigated radiation therapy or radiotherapy as an intervention. For each systematic review, either quality assurance or quality control for the intervention was identified by a description of such processes in the published systematic reviews. Of the 67 Cochrane systematic reviews studied, only two mentioned quality assurance or quality control. Our findings revealed that 65 of 67 (97%) Cochrane systematic reviews of radiation therapy interventions failed to consider the quality of the intervention. We suggest that advice about the evaluation of intervention quality be added to author support materials. © 2017 The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Radiologists.

  4. Antenatal interventions to reduce preterm birth: an overview of Cochrane systematic reviews

    PubMed Central

    2014-01-01

    Background Several factors are associated with an increased risk of preterm birth (PTB); therefore, various interventions might have the potential to influence it. Due to the large number of interventions that address PTB, the objective of this overview is to summarise evidence from Cochrane reviews regarding the effects and safety of these different interventions. Methods We conducted a systematic literature search in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. Included reviews should be based on randomised controlled trials comparing antenatal non-pharmacological and pharmacological interventions that directly or indirectly address PTB with placebo/no treatment or routine care in pregnant women at less than 37 completed weeks of gestation without signs of threatened preterm labour. We considered PTB at less than 37 completed weeks of gestation as the primary outcome. Results We included 56 Cochrane systematic reviews. Three interventions increased PTB risk significantly. Twelve interventions led to a statistically significant lower incidence of PTBs. However, this reduction was mostly observed in defined at-risk subgroups of pregnant women. The remaining antenatal interventions failed to prove a significant effect on PTB < 37 weeks, but some of them at least showed a positive effect in secondary outcomes (e.g., reduction in early PTBs). As an unintended result of this review, we identified 28 additional Cochrane reviews which intended to report on PTB < 37 weeks, but were not able to find any RCTs reporting appropriate data. Conclusions The possible effects of a diverse range of interventions on PTB have been evaluated in Cochrane systematic reviews. Few interventions have been demonstrated to be effective and a small number have been found to be harmful. For around half of the interventions evaluated, the Cochrane review concluded that there was insufficient evidence to provide sound recommendations for clinical practice. No RCT evidence is available

  5. Antenatal interventions to reduce preterm birth: an overview of Cochrane Systematic Reviews.

    PubMed

    Piso, Brigitte; Zechmeister-Koss, Ingrid; Winkler, Roman

    2014-04-23

    Several factors are associated with an increased risk of preterm birth (PTB); therefore, various interventions might have the potential to influence it. Due to the large number of interventions that address PTB, the objective of this overview is to summarise evidence from Cochrane reviews regarding the effects and safety of these different interventions. We conducted a systematic literature search in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. Included reviews should be based on randomised controlled trials comparing antenatal non-pharmacological and pharmacological interventions that directly or indirectly address PTB with placebo/no treatment or routine care in pregnant women at less than 37 completed weeks of gestation without signs of threatened preterm labour. We considered PTB at less than 37 completed weeks of gestation as the primary outcome. We included 56 Cochrane systematic reviews. Three interventions increased PTB risk significantly. Twelve interventions led to a statistically significant lower incidence of PTBs. However, this reduction was mostly observed in defined at-risk subgroups of pregnant women. The remaining antenatal interventions failed to prove a significant effect on PTB < 37 weeks, but some of them at least showed a positive effect in secondary outcomes (e.g., reduction in early PTBs). As an unintended result of this review, we identified 28 additional Cochrane reviews which intended to report on PTB < 37 weeks, but were not able to find any RCTs reporting appropriate data. The possible effects of a diverse range of interventions on PTB have been evaluated in Cochrane systematic reviews. Few interventions have been demonstrated to be effective and a small number have been found to be harmful. For around half of the interventions evaluated, the Cochrane review concluded that there was insufficient evidence to provide sound recommendations for clinical practice. No RCT evidence is available for a number of potentially relevant

  6. The medline UK filter: development and validation of a geographic search filter to retrieve research about the UK from OVID medline.

    PubMed

    Ayiku, Lynda; Levay, Paul; Hudson, Tom; Craven, Jenny; Barrett, Elizabeth; Finnegan, Amy; Adams, Rachel

    2017-07-13

    A validated geographic search filter for the retrieval of research about the United Kingdom (UK) from bibliographic databases had not previously been published. To develop and validate a geographic search filter to retrieve research about the UK from OVID medline with high recall and precision. Three gold standard sets of references were generated using the relative recall method. The sets contained references to studies about the UK which had informed National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidance. The first and second sets were used to develop and refine the medline UK filter. The third set was used to validate the filter. Recall, precision and number-needed-to-read (NNR) were calculated using a case study. The validated medline UK filter demonstrated 87.6% relative recall against the third gold standard set. In the case study, the medline UK filter demonstrated 100% recall, 11.4% precision and a NNR of nine. A validated geographic search filter to retrieve research about the UK with high recall and precision has been developed. The medline UK filter can be applied to systematic literature searches in OVID medline for topics with a UK focus. © 2017 Crown copyright. Health Information and Libraries Journal © 2017 Health Libraries GroupThis article is published with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen's Printer for Scotland.

  7. MedlinePlus FAQ: Copyrighted and Non-Copyrighted Material

    MedlinePlus

    ... medlineplus.gov/faq/copyrightfaq.html Question: Is the material on MedlinePlus copyrighted? To use the sharing features ... Answer: MedlinePlus contains both copyrighted and non-copyrighted material. Please see our copyright information page . Restrictions may ...

  8. Health Topics: MedlinePlus

    MedlinePlus

    ... Groups Seniors Women Health and Wellness Expand Section Disasters Fitness and Exercise Food and Nutrition Health System Personal Health Issues Safety Issues Sexual Health Issues Social/Family Issues Wellness and Lifestyle About MedlinePlus Site Map FAQs Customer Support Get email updates Subscribe ...

  9. MEDLINE: the options for health professionals.

    PubMed

    Wood, E H

    1994-01-01

    The bibliographic database MEDLINE, produced by the National Library of Medicine (NLM), is a computerized index to the world's biomedical literature. The database can be searched back to 1966 and contains 6.8 million records. The various means of access are divided, for the purposes of this article, into three categories: logging onto a remote host computer by telephone and modem or by the Internet; subscribing to part or all of the database on compact disc (CD-ROM); and leasing the data on a transport medium such as magnetic tape or CDs for loading on a local host computer. Decisions about which method is preferable in a given situation depend on cost, availability of hardware and software, local expertise, and the size of the intended user population. Trends include increased access to the Internet by health professionals, increased network speed, links from MEDLINE records to full-text databases or online journals, and integration of MEDLINE into wider health information systems.

  10. Pharmacokinetic drug-drug interaction and their implication in clinical management.

    PubMed

    Palleria, Caterina; Di Paolo, Antonello; Giofrè, Chiara; Caglioti, Chiara; Leuzzi, Giacomo; Siniscalchi, Antonio; De Sarro, Giovambattista; Gallelli, Luca

    2013-07-01

    Drug-drug interactions (DDIs) are one of the commonest causes of medication error in developed countries, particularly in the elderly due to poly-therapy, with a prevalence of 20-40%. In particular, poly-therapy increases the complexity of therapeutic management and thereby the risk of clinically important DDIs, which can both induce the development of adverse drug reactions or reduce the clinical efficacy. DDIs can be classify into two main groups: pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic. In this review, using Medline, PubMed, Embase, Cochrane library and Reference lists we searched articles published until June 30 2012, and we described the mechanism of pharmacokinetic DDIs focusing the interest on their clinical implications.

  11. MedlinePlus - Health Information from the National Library of Medicine

    MedlinePlus

    ... MedlinePlus GO GO About MedlinePlus Site Map FAQs Customer Support Health Topics Drugs & Supplements Videos & Tools Español ... Connect for EHRs About MedlinePlus Site Map FAQs Customer Support Get email updates Subscribe to RSS Follow ...

  12. Retrieval feedback in MEDLINE.

    PubMed Central

    Srinivasan, P

    1996-01-01

    OBJECTIVE: To investigate a new approach for query expansion based on retrieval feedback. The first objective in this study was to examine alternative query-expansion methods within the same retrieval-feedback framework. The three alternatives proposed are: expansion on the MeSH query field alone, expansion on the free-text field alone, and expansion on both the MeSH and the free-text fields. The second objective was to gain further understanding of retrieval feedback by examining possible dependencies on relevant documents during the feedback cycle. DESIGN: Comparative study of retrieval effectiveness using the original unexpanded and the alternative expanded user queries on a MEDLINE test collection of 75 queries and 2,334 MEDLINE citations. MEASUREMENTS: Retrieval effectivenesses of the original unexpanded and the alternative expanded queries were compared using 11-point-average precision scores (11-AvgP). These are averages of precision scores obtained at 11 standard recall points. RESULTS: All three expansion strategies significantly improved the original queries in terms of retrieval effectiveness. Expansion on MeSH alone was equivalent to expansion on both MeSH and the free-text fields. Expansion on the free-text field alone improved the queries significantly less than did the other two strategies. The second part of the study indicated that retrieval-feedback-based expansion yields significant performance improvements independent of the availability of relevant documents for feedback information. CONCLUSIONS: Retrieval feedback offers a robust procedure for query expansion that is most effective for MEDLINE when applied to the MeSH field. PMID:8653452

  13. Beyond MEDLINE for literature searches.

    PubMed

    Conn, Vicki S; Isaramalai, Sang-arun; Rath, Sabyasachi; Jantarakupt, Peeranuch; Wadhawan, Rohini; Dash, Yashodhara

    2003-01-01

    To describe strategies for a comprehensive literature search. MEDLINE searches result in limited numbers of studies that are often biased toward statistically significant findings. Diversified search strategies are needed. Empirical evidence about the recall and precision of diverse search strategies is presented. Challenges and strengths of each search strategy are identified. Search strategies vary in recall and precision. Often sensitivity and specificity are inversely related. Valuable search strategies include examination of multiple diverse computerized databases, ancestry searches, citation index searches, examination of research registries, journal hand searching, contact with the "invisible college," examination of abstracts, Internet searches, and contact with sources of synthesized information. Extending searches beyond MEDLINE enables researchers to conduct more systematic comprehensive searches.

  14. Improving accuracy for identifying related PubMed queries by an integrated approach.

    PubMed

    Lu, Zhiyong; Wilbur, W John

    2009-10-01

    PubMed is the most widely used tool for searching biomedical literature online. As with many other online search tools, a user often types a series of multiple related queries before retrieving satisfactory results to fulfill a single information need. Meanwhile, it is also a common phenomenon to see a user type queries on unrelated topics in a single session. In order to study PubMed users' search strategies, it is necessary to be able to automatically separate unrelated queries and group together related queries. Here, we report a novel approach combining both lexical and contextual analyses for segmenting PubMed query sessions and identifying related queries and compare its performance with the previous approach based solely on concept mapping. We experimented with our integrated approach on sample data consisting of 1539 pairs of consecutive user queries in 351 user sessions. The prediction results of 1396 pairs agreed with the gold-standard annotations, achieving an overall accuracy of 90.7%. This demonstrates that our approach is significantly better than the previously published method. By applying this approach to a one day query log of PubMed, we found that a significant proportion of information needs involved more than one PubMed query, and that most of the consecutive queries for the same information need are lexically related. Finally, the proposed PubMed distance is shown to be an accurate and meaningful measure for determining the contextual similarity between biological terms. The integrated approach can play a critical role in handling real-world PubMed query log data as is demonstrated in our experiments.

  15. Improving accuracy for identifying related PubMed queries by an integrated approach

    PubMed Central

    Lu, Zhiyong; Wilbur, W. John

    2009-01-01

    PubMed is the most widely used tool for searching biomedical literature online. As with many other online search tools, a user often types a series of multiple related queries before retrieving satisfactory results to fulfill a single information need. Meanwhile, it is also a common phenomenon to see a user type queries on unrelated topics in a single session. In order to study PubMed users’ search strategies, it is necessary to be able to automatically separate unrelated queries and group together related queries. Here, we report a novel approach combining both lexical and contextual analyses for segmenting PubMed query sessions and identifying related queries and compare its performance with the previous approach based solely on concept mapping. We experimented with our integrated approach on sample data consisting of 1,539 pairs of consecutive user queries in 351 user sessions. The prediction results of 1,396 pairs agreed with the gold-standard annotations, achieving an overall accuracy of 90.7%. This demonstrates that our approach is significantly better than the previously published method. By applying this approach to a one day query log of PubMed, we found that a significant proportion of information needs involved more than one PubMed query, and that most of the consecutive queries for the same information need are lexically related. Finally, the proposed PubMed distance is shown to be an accurate and meaningful measure for determining the contextual similarity between biological terms. The integrated approach can play a critical role in handling real-world PubMed query log data as is demonstrated in our experiments. PMID:19162232

  16. Systematic reviews of therapeutic interventions frequently consider patient-important outcomes.

    PubMed

    Ameur, Hayet; Ravaud, Philippe; Fayard, Florence; Riveros, Carolina; Dechartres, Agnes

    2017-04-01

    To determine whether recently published and ongoing systematic reviews of therapeutic interventions assess patient-important outcomes. For this methodological review, we searched MEDLINE via PubMed for recently published systematic reviews and online registry of systematic reviews (PROSPERO) for ongoing systematic reviews. We selected systematic reviews with meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials. We extracted all outcomes defined in the methods section and categorized them. Mortality, other clinical events, pain, quality of life, function, and therapeutic decisions were considered patient-important outcomes. We included 420 systematic reviews: 90 Cochrane reviews, 200 other published reviews, and 130 registered ongoing reviews. Primary outcomes were defined in 85 Cochrane reviews (95%), 98 (49%) other published reviews and all ongoing reviews. At least one patient-important outcome was defined as a primary outcome in 81/85 Cochrane reviews (95%), 78/98 other published reviews (80%), and 117/130 ongoing reviews (90%). Considering all outcomes assessed, at least one patient-important outcome was evaluated in 90/90 Cochrane reviews (100%), 189/200 other published reviews (95%), and 121/130 ongoing reviews (93%). Most recent systematic reviews aim to assess patient-important outcomes, which contrasts with RCTs. These results suggest some important gaps between primary and secondary research. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  17. An active visual search interface for Medline.

    PubMed

    Xuan, Weijian; Dai, Manhong; Mirel, Barbara; Wilson, Justin; Athey, Brian; Watson, Stanley J; Meng, Fan

    2007-01-01

    Searching the Medline database is almost a daily necessity for many biomedical researchers. However, available Medline search solutions are mainly designed for the quick retrieval of a small set of most relevant documents. Because of this search model, they are not suitable for the large-scale exploration of literature and the underlying biomedical conceptual relationships, which are common tasks in the age of high throughput experimental data analysis and cross-discipline research. We try to develop a new Medline exploration approach by incorporating interactive visualization together with powerful grouping, summary, sorting and active external content retrieval functions. Our solution, PubViz, is based on the FLEX platform designed for interactive web applications and its prototype is publicly available at: http://brainarray.mbni.med.umich.edu/Brainarray/DataMining/PubViz.

  18. Production and citation of cochrane systematic reviews: a bibliometrics analysis.

    PubMed

    Shen, Jiantong; Li, Youping; Clarke, Mike; Du, Liang; Wang, Li; Zhong, Dake

    2014-05-06

    To evaluate the production and utilization of Cochrane systematic reviews(CSRs) and to analyze its influential factors, so as to improve the capacity of translating CSRs into practice. All CSRs and protocols were retrieved from the Cochrane Library ISSUE 2, 2011 and citation data were retrieved from SCI database. Citation analysis was used to analyze the situation of CSRs production and utilization. CSR publication had grown from an annual average of 32 to 718 documents. Only one developing country was among the ten countries with the largest amount of publications. High income countries accounted for 83% of CSR publications and 90.8% of cited counts. 34.7% of CSRs had a cited count of 0, while only 0.9% had been cited more than 50 times. Highly cited CSRs were published in England, Australia, Canada, USA and other high income countries. The countries with a Cochrane center or a Cochrane methodology group had a greater capability of CSRs production and citing than others. The CSRs addressing the topics of diseases were more than those targeted at public health issues. There was a big gap in citations of different interventions even for the same topic. The capability of CSR production and translation grew rapidly, but varied among countries and institutions, which was affected by several factors such as the capability of research, the resourcesand the applicability of the evidence. It is important to improve evidence translation through educating, training and prioritizing the problems based on real demands of end user. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

  19. Searching for unpublished data for Cochrane reviews: cross sectional study.

    PubMed

    Schroll, Jeppe Bennekou; Bero, Lisa; Gøtzsche, Peter C

    2013-04-23

    To describe the experiences of authors of Cochrane reviews in searching for, getting access to, and using unpublished data. Cross sectional study. Cochrane reviews. 2184 corresponding authors of Cochrane reviews as of May 2012. Frequencies of responses to open ended and closed questions in an online survey. Of 5915 authors contacted by email, 2184 replied (36.9% response rate). Of those, 1656 (75.8%) had searched for unpublished data. In 913 cases (55.1% of 1656), new data were obtained and we received details about these data for 794 data sources. The most common data source was "trialists/investigators," accounting for 73.9% (n=587) of the 794 data sources. Most of the data were used in the review (82.0%, 651/794) and in 53.4% (424/794) of cases data were provided in less than a month. Summary data were most common, provided by 50.8% (403/794) of the data sources, whereas 20.5% (163/794) provided individual patient data. In only 6.3% (50/794) of cases were data reported to have been obtained from the manufacturers, and this group waited longer and had to make more contacts to get the data. The data from manufacturers were less likely to be for individual patients and less likely to be used in the review. Data from regulatory agencies accounted for 3.0% (24/794) of the obtained data. Most authors of Cochrane reviews who searched for unpublished data received useful information, primarily from trialists. Our response rate was low and the authors who did not respond were probably less likely to have searched for unpublished data. Manufacturers and regulatory agencies were uncommon sources of unpublished data.

  20. Statins: MedlinePlus Health Topic

    MedlinePlus

    ... for Medical Education and Research) Also in Spanish ... References and abstracts from MEDLINE/PubMed (National Library of Medicine) Article: Novel method versus the Friedewald method for estimating low-density ...

  1. Gas: MedlinePlus Health Topic

    MedlinePlus

    ... Foods That May Cause Gas (International Foundation for Functional Gastrointestinal Disorders) ... References and abstracts from MEDLINE/PubMed (National Library of Medicine) Article: Daikenchuto for reducing postoperative ileus in patients ...

  2. CPR: MedlinePlus Health Topic

    MedlinePlus

    ... to health information from non-government Web sites. See our disclaimer about external links and our quality guidelines . About MedlinePlus Site Map FAQs Customer Support Get email updates Subscribe to ...

  3. Trichomoniasis: MedlinePlus Health Topic

    MedlinePlus

    ... to health information from non-government Web sites. See our disclaimer about external links and our quality guidelines . About MedlinePlus Site Map FAQs Customer Support Get email updates Subscribe to ...

  4. Colonoscopy: MedlinePlus Health Topic

    MedlinePlus

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  5. The impact of Cochrane Systematic Reviews: a mixed method evaluation of outputs from Cochrane Review Groups supported by the UK National Institute for Health Research.

    PubMed

    Bunn, Frances; Trivedi, Daksha; Alderson, Phil; Hamilton, Laura; Martin, Alice; Iliffe, Steve

    2014-10-27

    There has been a growing emphasis on evidence-informed decision-making in health care. Systematic reviews, such as those produced by the Cochrane Collaboration, have been a key component of this movement. The UK National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Systematic Review Programme currently supports 20 Cochrane Review Groups (CRGs). The aim of this study was to identify the impacts of Cochrane reviews published by NIHR-funded CRGs during the years 2007-2011. We sent questionnaires to CRGs and review authors, interviewed guideline developers and used bibliometrics and documentary review to get an overview of CRG impact and to evaluate the impact of a sample of 60 Cochrane reviews. We used a framework with four categories (knowledge production, research targeting, informing policy development and impact on practice/services). A total of 1,502 new and updated reviews were produced by the 20 NIHR-funded CRGs between 2007 and 2011. The clearest impacts were on policy with a total of 483 systematic reviews cited in 247 sets of guidance: 62 were international, 175 national (87 from the UK) and 10 local. Review authors and CRGs provided some examples of impact on practice or services, for example, safer use of medication, the identification of new effective drugs or treatments and potential economic benefits through the reduction in the use of unproven or unnecessary procedures. However, such impacts are difficult to objectively document, and the majority of reviewers were unsure if their review had produced specific impacts. Qualitative data suggested that Cochrane reviews often play an instrumental role in informing guidance, although a poor fit with guideline scope or methods, reviews being out of date and a lack of communication between CRGs and guideline developers were barriers to their use. Health and economic impacts of research are generally difficult to measure. We found that to be the case with this evaluation. Impacts on knowledge production and clinical

  6. Assisted reproductive technology: an overview of Cochrane Reviews.

    PubMed

    Farquhar, Cindy; Rishworth, Josephine R; Brown, Julie; Nelen, Willianne L D M; Marjoribanks, Jane

    2015-07-15

    As many as one in six couples will encounter problems with fertility, defined as failure to achieve a clinical pregnancy after regular intercourse for 12 months. Increasingly, couples are turning to assisted reproductive technology (ART) for help with conceiving and ultimately giving birth to a healthy live baby of their own. Fertility treatments are complex, and each ART cycle consists of several steps. If one of the steps is incorrectly applied, the stakes are high as conception may not occur. With this in mind, it is important that each step of the ART cycle is supported by good evidence from well-designed studies. To summarise the evidence from Cochrane systematic reviews on procedures and treatment options available to couples with subfertility undergoing assisted reproductive technology (ART). Published Cochrane systematic reviews of couples undergoing ART (in vitro fertilisation or intracytoplasmic sperm injection) were eligible for inclusion in the overview. We also identified Cochrane reviews in preparation, for future inclusion.The outcomes of the overview were live birth (primary outcome), clinical pregnancy, multiple pregnancy, miscarriage and ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (secondary outcomes). Studies of intrauterine insemination and ovulation induction were excluded.Selection of systematic reviews, data extraction and quality assessment were undertaken in duplicate. Review quality was assessed by using the AMSTAR tool. Reviews were organised by their relevance to specific stages in the ART cycle. Their findings were summarised in the text and data for each outcome were reported in 'Additional tables'. Fifty-nine systematic reviews published in The Cochrane Library up to July 2015 were included. All were high quality. Thirty-two reviews identified interventions that were effective (n = 19) or promising (n = 13), 14 reviews identified interventions that were either ineffective (n = 2) or possibly ineffective (n = 12), and 13 reviews were unable to

  7. Assisted reproductive technology: an overview of Cochrane reviews.

    PubMed

    Farquhar, Cindy; Rishworth, Josephine R; Brown, Julie; Nelen, Willianne L D M; Marjoribanks, Jane

    2014-12-23

    As many as one in six couples will encounter problems with fertility, defined as failure to achieve a clinical pregnancy after regular intercourse for 12 months. Increasingly, couples are turning to assisted reproductive technology (ART) for help with conceiving and ultimately giving birth to a healthy live baby of their own. Fertility treatments are complex, and each ART cycle consists of several steps. If one of the steps is incorrectly applied, the stakes are high as conception may not occur. With this in mind, it is important that each step of the ART cycle is supported by good evidence from well-designed studies. To summarise the evidence from Cochrane systematic reviews on procedures and treatment options available to couples with subfertility undergoing assisted reproductive technology (ART). Published Cochrane systematic reviews of couples undergoing ART (in vitro fertilisation or intracytoplasmic sperm injection) were eligible for inclusion in the overview. We also identified Cochrane reviews in preparation, for future inclusion.The outcomes of the overview were live birth (primary outcome), clinical pregnancy, multiple pregnancy, miscarriage and ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (secondary outcomes). Studies of intrauterine insemination and ovulation induction were excluded.Selection of systematic reviews, data extraction and quality assessment were undertaken in duplicate. Review quality was assessed by using the AMSTAR tool. Reviews were organised by their relevance to specific stages in the ART cycle. Their findings were summarised in the text and data for each outcome were reported in 'Additional tables'. Fifty-eight systematic reviews published in The Cochrane Library were included. All were high quality. Thirty-two reviews identified interventions that were effective (n = 19) or promising (n = 13), 14 reviews identified interventions that were either ineffective (n = 3) or possibly ineffective (n=11), and 12 reviews were unable to draw conclusions

  8. Assisted reproductive technology: an overview of Cochrane Reviews.

    PubMed

    Farquhar, Cindy; Rishworth, Josephine R; Brown, Julie; Nelen, Willianne L D M; Marjoribanks, Jane

    2013-08-22

    As many as one in six couples will encounter problems with fertility, defined as failure to achieve a clinical pregnancy after regular intercourse for 12 months. Increasingly, couples are turning to assisted reproductive technology (ART) for help with conceiving and ultimately giving birth to a healthy live baby of their own. Fertility treatments are complex, and each ART cycle consists of several steps. If one of the steps is incorrectly applied, the stakes are high as conception may not occur. With this in mind, it is important that each step of the ART cycle is supported by good evidence from well-designed studies. To summarise the evidence from Cochrane systematic reviews on procedures and treatment options available to couples with subfertility undergoing assisted reproductive technology (ART). Published Cochrane systematic reviews of couples undergoing ART (in vitro fertilisation or intracytoplasmic sperm injection) were eligible for inclusion in the overview. We also identified Cochrane reviews in preparation, for future inclusion.The outcomes of the overview were live birth (primary outcome), clinical pregnancy, multiple pregnancy, miscarriage and ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (secondary outcomes). Studies of intrauterine insemination and ovulation induction were excluded.Selection of systematic reviews, data extraction and quality assessment were undertaken in duplicate. Review quality was assessed by using the AMSTAR tool. Reviews were organised by their relevance to specific stages in the ART cycle. Their findings were summarised in the text and data for each outcome were reported in 'Additional tables'. Fifty-four systematic reviews published in The Cochrane Library were included. All were high quality. Thirty reviews identified interventions that were effective (n = 18) or promising (n = 12), 13 reviews identified interventions that were either ineffective (n = 3) or possibly ineffective (n=10), and 11 reviews were unable to draw conclusions due to

  9. Enriching PubMed Related Article Search with Sentence Level Co-citations

    PubMed Central

    Tran, Nam; Alves, Pedro; Ma, Shuangge

    2009-01-01

    PubMed related article links identify closely related articles and enhance our ability to navigate the biomedical literature. They are derived by calculating the word similarity between two articles, relating articles with overlapping word content. In this paper, we propose to enrich PubMed with a new type of related article link based on citations within a single sentence (i.e. sentence level co-citations or SLCs). Using different similarity metrics, we demonstrated that articles linked by SLCs are highly related. We also showed that only half of SLCs are found among PubMed related article links. Additionally, we discuss how the citing sentence of an SLC explains the connection between two articles. PMID:20351935

  10. Comparing Medline citations using modified N-grams.

    PubMed

    Nawab, Rao Muhammad Adeel; Stevenson, Mark; Clough, Paul

    2014-01-01

    We aim to identify duplicate pairs of Medline citations, particularly when the documents are not identical but contain similar information. Duplicate pairs of citations are identified by comparing word n-grams in pairs of documents. N-grams are modified using two approaches which take account of the fact that the document may have been altered. These are: (1) deletion, an item in the n-gram is removed; and (2) substitution, an item in the n-gram is substituted with a similar term obtained from the Unified Medical Language System Metathesaurus. N-grams are also weighted using a score derived from a language model. Evaluation is carried out using a set of 520 Medline citation pairs, including a set of 260 manually verified duplicate pairs obtained from the Deja Vu database. The approach accurately detects duplicate Medline document pairs with an F1 measure score of 0.99. Allowing for word deletions and substitution improves performance. The best results are obtained by combining scores for n-grams of length 1-5 words. Results show that the detection of duplicate Medline citations can be improved by modifying n-grams and that high performance can also be obtained using only unigrams (F1=0.959), particularly when allowing for substitutions of alternative phrases.

  11. Non-operative management versus operative management in high-grade blunt hepatic injury.

    PubMed

    Cirocchi, Roberto; Trastulli, Stefano; Pressi, Eleonora; Farinella, Eriberto; Avenia, Stefano; Morales Uribe, Carlos Hernando; Botero, Ana Maria; Barrera, Luis M

    2015-08-24

    Surgery used to be the treatment of choice in cases of blunt hepatic injury, but this approach gradually changed over the last two decades as increasing non-operative management (NOM) of splenic injury led to its use for hepatic injury. The improvement in critical care monitoring and computed tomographic scanning, as well as the more frequent use of interventional radiology techniques, has helped to bring about this change to non-operative management. Liver trauma ranges from a small capsular tear, without parenchymal laceration, to massive parenchymal injury with major hepatic vein/retrohepatic vena cava lesions. In 1994, the Organ Injury Scaling Committee of the American Association for the Surgery of Trauma (AAST) revised the Hepatic Injury Scale to have a range from grade I to VI. Minor injuries (grade I or II) are the most frequent liver injuries (80% to 90% of all cases); severe injuries are grade III-V lesions; grade VI lesions are frequently incompatible with survival. In the medical literature, the majority of patients who have undergone NOM have low-grade liver injuries. The safety of NOM in high-grade liver lesions, AAST grade IV and V, remains a subject of debate as a high incidence of liver and collateral extra-abdominal complications are still described. To assess the effects of non-operative management compared to operative management in high-grade (grade III-V) blunt hepatic injury. The search for studies was run on 14 April 2014. We searched the Cochrane Injuries Group's Specialised Register, The Cochrane Library, Ovid MEDLINE(R), Ovid MEDLINE(R) In-Process & Other Non-Indexed Citations, Ovid MEDLINE(R) Daily and Ovid OLDMEDLINE(R), Embase Classic+Embase (Ovid), PubMed, ISI WOS (SCI-EXPANDED, SSCI, CPCI-S & CPSI-SSH), clinical trials registries, conference proceedings, and we screened reference lists. All randomised trials that compare non-operative management versus operative management in high-grade blunt hepatic injury. Two authors independently

  12. Managing the incidence of selective reporting bias: a survey of Cochrane review groups.

    PubMed

    Reid, Emma K; Tejani, Aaron M; Huan, Lawrence N; Egan, Gregory; O'Sullivan, Cait; Mayhew, Alain D; Kabir, Monisha

    2015-06-13

    Selective reporting bias (SRB), the incomplete publication of outcomes measured or of analyses performed in a study, may lead to the over- or underestimation of treatment effects or harms. Cochrane systematic reviews of interventions are required to assess the risk of SRB, achieved in part by applying the Cochrane risk of bias tool to each included randomised trial. The Cochrane Handbook outlines strategies for a comprehensive risk of bias assessment, but the extent to which these are followed by Cochrane review groups (CRGs) has not been assessed to date. The objective of this study was to determine the methods which CRGs require of their authors to address SRB within systematic reviews, and how SRB risk assessments are verified. A cross-sectional survey was developed and distributed electronically to the 52 CRGs involved in intervention reviews. Responses from 42 CRGs show that the majority refer their authors to the Cochrane Handbook for specific instruction regarding assessments of SRB. The handbook strategies remain variably enforced, with 57 % (24/42) of CRGs not requiring review authors to search for included trial protocols and 31 % (13/42) not requiring that contact with individual study authors be attempted. Only half (48 %, 20/42) of the groups consistently verify review authors' assessments of the risk of SRB to ensure completeness. A range of practices are used by CRGs for addressing SRB, with many steps outlined in the Cochrane Handbook being encouraged but not required. The majority of CRGs do not consider their review authors to be sufficiently competent to assess for SRB, yet risk of bias assessments are not always verified by editors before publication. The implications of SRB may not be fully appreciated by all CRGs, and resolving the identified issues may require an approach targeting several steps in the systematic review process.

  13. What do Cochrane systematic reviews say about new practices on integrative medicine?

    PubMed

    Riera, Rachel; Braga, Vinícius Lopes; Rocha, Luana Pompeu Dos Santos; Bernardo, Daniel Damasceno; Andrade, Luísa Avelar Fernandes de; Hsu, Jessica Chiu; Silva, Luciana Di Giovanni Marques da; Suetsugu, Rodrigo Cesar de Sá; Dittrich, Nicole Hosni; Lima, Lucas Riguete Pereira de; Silveira, Vicente Penido da; Kruglensky, Barbara Caon; Leonel, Letícia de Freitas; Barros, Edivando de Moura; Costa, Anderson Adriano Leal Freitas da; Quintella, Miguel Lins; Pacheco, Rafael Leite; Cruz, Carolina de Oliveira; Martimbianco, Ana Luiza Cabrera; Pachito, Daniela Vianna; Mozetic, Vania; Teixeira, Tatiana de Bruyn Ferraz; Torloni, Maria Regina; Atallah, Alvaro Nagib

    2018-06-25

    This study identified and summarized all Cochrane systematic reviews (SRs) on the effects of ten integrative practices that were recently added to the Brazilian public healthcare system (SUS). Review of systematic reviews, conducted in the Discipline of Evidence-Based Medicine, Escola Paulista de Medicina (EPM), Universidade Federal de São Paulo (Unifesp). Review of Cochrane SRs on the following interventions were identified, summarized and critically assessed: apitherapy, aromatherapy, bioenergetics, family constellation, flower therapy, chromotherapy, geotherapy, hypnotherapy, hand imposition or ozone therapy. We included a total of 16 SRs: 4 on apitherapy, 4 on aromatherapy, 6 on hypnotherapy and 2 on ozone therapy. No Cochrane SR was found regarding bioenergetics, family constellation, chromotherapy, clay therapy, flower therapy or hand imposition. The only high-quality evidence was in relation to the potential benefit of apitherapy, specifically regarding some benefits from honey dressings for partial healing of burn wounds, for reduction of coughing among children with acute coughs and for preventing allergic reactions to insect stings. Except for some specific uses of apitherapy (honey for burn wounds and for acute coughs and bee venom for allergic reactions to insect stings), the use of ten integrative practices that have recently been incorporated into SUS does not seem to be supported by evidence from Cochrane SRs.

  14. Helping others hear better | NIH MedlinePlus the Magazine

    MedlinePlus

    Skip to main content NIH MedlinePlus the Magazine NIH MedlinePlus Salud Download the Current Issue PDF [2.68 mb] Trusted Health Information from the National Institutes of Health Home Current Issue ...

  15. NIH on the web | NIH MedlinePlus the Magazine

    MedlinePlus

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  16. NIH on the web | NIH MedlinePlus the Magazine

    MedlinePlus

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  17. Searching for unpublished data for Cochrane reviews: cross sectional study

    PubMed Central

    Bero, Lisa; Gøtzsche, Peter C

    2013-01-01

    Objective To describe the experiences of authors of Cochrane reviews in searching for, getting access to, and using unpublished data. Design Cross sectional study. Setting Cochrane reviews. Participants 2184 corresponding authors of Cochrane reviews as of May 2012. Main outcome measure Frequencies of responses to open ended and closed questions in an online survey. Results Of 5915 authors contacted by email, 2184 replied (36.9% response rate). Of those, 1656 (75.8%) had searched for unpublished data. In 913 cases (55.1% of 1656), new data were obtained and we received details about these data for 794 data sources. The most common data source was “trialists/investigators,” accounting for 73.9% (n=587) of the 794 data sources. Most of the data were used in the review (82.0%, 651/794) and in 53.4% (424/794) of cases data were provided in less than a month. Summary data were most common, provided by 50.8% (403/794) of the data sources, whereas 20.5% (163/794) provided individual patient data. In only 6.3% (50/794) of cases were data reported to have been obtained from the manufacturers, and this group waited longer and had to make more contacts to get the data. The data from manufacturers were less likely to be for individual patients and less likely to be used in the review. Data from regulatory agencies accounted for 3.0% (24/794) of the obtained data. Conclusions Most authors of Cochrane reviews who searched for unpublished data received useful information, primarily from trialists. Our response rate was low and the authors who did not respond were probably less likely to have searched for unpublished data. Manufacturers and regulatory agencies were uncommon sources of unpublished data. PMID:23613540

  18. Usefulness of Cochrane Skin Group reviews for clinical practice.

    PubMed

    Davila-Seijo, P; Batalla, A; Garcia-Doval, I

    2013-10-01

    Systematic reviews are one of the most important sources of information for evidence-based medicine. However, there is a general impression that these reviews rarely report results that provide sufficient evidence to change clinical practice. The aim of this study was to determine the percentage of Cochrane Skin Group reviews reporting results with the potential to guide clinical decision-making. We performed a bibliometric analysis of all the systematic reviews published by the Cochrane Skin Group up to 16 August, 2012. We retrieved 55 reviews, which were analyzed and graded independently by 2 investigators into 3 categories: 0 (insufficient evidence to support or reject the use of an intervention), 1 (insufficient evidence to support or reject the use of an intervention but sufficient evidence to support recommendations or suggestions), and 2 (sufficient evidence to support or reject the use of an intervention). Our analysis showed that 25.5% (14/55) of the studies did not provide sufficient evidence to support or reject the use of the interventions studied, 45.5% (25/25) provided sufficient but not strong evidence to support recommendations or suggestions, and 29.1% (16/55) provided strong evidence to support or reject the use of 1 or more of the interventions studied. Most of the systematic reviews published by the Cochrane Skin Group provide useful information to improve clinical practice. Clinicians should read these reviews and reconsider their current practice. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier España, S.L. and AEDV. All rights reserved.

  19. Retrieving clinical evidence: a comparison of PubMed and Google Scholar for quick clinical searches.

    PubMed

    Shariff, Salimah Z; Bejaimal, Shayna Ad; Sontrop, Jessica M; Iansavichus, Arthur V; Haynes, R Brian; Weir, Matthew A; Garg, Amit X

    2013-08-15

    Physicians frequently search PubMed for information to guide patient care. More recently, Google Scholar has gained popularity as another freely accessible bibliographic database. To compare the performance of searches in PubMed and Google Scholar. We surveyed nephrologists (kidney specialists) and provided each with a unique clinical question derived from 100 renal therapy systematic reviews. Each physician provided the search terms they would type into a bibliographic database to locate evidence to answer the clinical question. We executed each of these searches in PubMed and Google Scholar and compared results for the first 40 records retrieved (equivalent to 2 default search pages in PubMed). We evaluated the recall (proportion of relevant articles found) and precision (ratio of relevant to nonrelevant articles) of the searches performed in PubMed and Google Scholar. Primary studies included in the systematic reviews served as the reference standard for relevant articles. We further documented whether relevant articles were available as free full-texts. Compared with PubMed, the average search in Google Scholar retrieved twice as many relevant articles (PubMed: 11%; Google Scholar: 22%; P<.001). Precision was similar in both databases (PubMed: 6%; Google Scholar: 8%; P=.07). Google Scholar provided significantly greater access to free full-text publications (PubMed: 5%; Google Scholar: 14%; P<.001). For quick clinical searches, Google Scholar returns twice as many relevant articles as PubMed and provides greater access to free full-text articles.

  20. Mastectomy: MedlinePlus Health Topic

    MedlinePlus

    ... from MEDLINE/PubMed (National Library of Medicine) Article: Quantitative analysis of shoulder function and strength after breast ... Institutes of Health The primary NIH organization for research on Mastectomy is the National Cancer Institute Disclaimers ...

  1. Tutorials for Africa: MedlinePlus

    MedlinePlus

    ... NLM created the first MedlinePlus African Tutorial on malaria in collaboration with the Faculty of Medicine and ... meaningful text and illustrations for the tutorials. The malaria tutorial was then field tested in villages by ...

  2. Archibald Cochrane (1909-1988): the father of evidence-based medicine.

    PubMed

    Stavrou, Antonio; Challoumas, Dimitrios; Dimitrakakis, Georgios

    2014-01-01

    Professor Archibald Cochrane (1909-1988) is considered to be the originator of the idea of evidence-based medicine in our era. With his landmark book 'Effectiveness and Efficiency: Random Reflections on Health services' he managed to inspire and positively influence the medical society with respect to the proper assessment of reliable evidence for the provision of the best medical care. His vision combined with his scientific achievements can be considered as the foundation of the Cochrane Collaboration; named after him in recognition of and gratitude for his pioneering work. We present the highlights of his adventurous and vibrant personal and academic life in an attempt to honour his contribution to shaping modern medical research.

  3. Improving links between literature and biological data with text mining: a case study with GEO, PDB and MEDLINE.

    PubMed

    Névéol, Aurélie; Wilbur, W John; Lu, Zhiyong

    2012-01-01

    High-throughput experiments and bioinformatics techniques are creating an exploding volume of data that are becoming overwhelming to keep track of for biologists and researchers who need to access, analyze and process existing data. Much of the available data are being deposited in specialized databases, such as the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) for microarrays or the Protein Data Bank (PDB) for protein structures and coordinates. Data sets are also being described by their authors in publications archived in literature databases such as MEDLINE and PubMed Central. Currently, the curation of links between biological databases and the literature mainly relies on manual labour, which makes it a time-consuming and daunting task. Herein, we analysed the current state of link curation between GEO, PDB and MEDLINE. We found that the link curation is heterogeneous depending on the sources and databases involved, and that overlap between sources is low, <50% for PDB and GEO. Furthermore, we showed that text-mining tools can automatically provide valuable evidence to help curators broaden the scope of articles and database entries that they review. As a result, we made recommendations to improve the coverage of curated links, as well as the consistency of information available from different databases while maintaining high-quality curation. Database URLs: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/, http://www.rcsb.org/pdb/

  4. [Use of PubMed to improve evidence-based medicine in routine urological practice].

    PubMed

    Rink, M; Kluth, L A; Shariat, S F; Chun, F K; Fisch, M; Dahm, P

    2013-03-01

    Applying evidence-based medicine in daily clinical practice is the basis of patient-centered medicine and knowledge of accurate literature acquisition skills is necessary for informed clinical decision-making. PubMed is an easy accessible, free bibliographic database comprising over 21 million citations from the medical field, life-science journals and online books. The article summarizes the effective use of PubMed in routine urological clinical practice based on a common case scenario. This article explains the simple use of PubMed to obtain the best search results with the highest evidence. Accurate knowledge about the use of PubMed in routine clinical practice can improve evidence-based medicine and also patient treatment.

  5. NIH MedlinePlus the Magazine: Health, Medical & Wellness Articles

    MedlinePlus

    ... to the Web site for NIH MedlinePlus, the magazine. Our purpose is to present you with the ... sponsorship and other charitable donations for NIH MedlinePlus magazine's publication and distribution, many more thousands of Americans ...

  6. Effectiveness of preventive and treatment interventions for primary headaches in the workplace: A systematic review of the literature.

    PubMed

    Lardon, Arnaud; Girard, Marie-Pier; Zaïm, Chérine; Lemeunier, Nadège; Descarreaux, Martin; Marchand, Andrée-Anne

    2017-01-01

    Aim The purpose of this systematic literature review is to assess the benefits of workplace-based occupational therapies and interventions, including acute and preventive medication, on headache intensity and frequency, related disability as well as work-related outcomes. Methods A search of the literature was conducted in PubMed, MEDLINE, Cochrane library, CINAHL and Embase using terms related to headache, workplace and occupational health. The Cochrane Collaboration's risk of bias assessment tool was used on individual studies to assess internal validity and the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development, and Evaluation system was applied to studies by clinical outcome and used to rate quality of evidence. Results Fifteen articles were included in the systematic review. None of them were classified as low risk of bias according to the Cochrane Collaboration's tool for assessing risk of bias. This systematic review found preliminary low-quality evidence suggesting that exercise and acupuncture can reduce workers' headache pain intensity, frequency and related disability. Conclusion Although this systematic review provided preliminary low evidence in favour of work-based intervention, studies with more rigorous designs and methodologies are needed to provide further evidence of the effectiveness of workplace-based headache management strategies.

  7. Retrieving Clinical Evidence: A Comparison of PubMed and Google Scholar for Quick Clinical Searches

    PubMed Central

    Bejaimal, Shayna AD; Sontrop, Jessica M; Iansavichus, Arthur V; Haynes, R Brian; Weir, Matthew A; Garg, Amit X

    2013-01-01

    Background Physicians frequently search PubMed for information to guide patient care. More recently, Google Scholar has gained popularity as another freely accessible bibliographic database. Objective To compare the performance of searches in PubMed and Google Scholar. Methods We surveyed nephrologists (kidney specialists) and provided each with a unique clinical question derived from 100 renal therapy systematic reviews. Each physician provided the search terms they would type into a bibliographic database to locate evidence to answer the clinical question. We executed each of these searches in PubMed and Google Scholar and compared results for the first 40 records retrieved (equivalent to 2 default search pages in PubMed). We evaluated the recall (proportion of relevant articles found) and precision (ratio of relevant to nonrelevant articles) of the searches performed in PubMed and Google Scholar. Primary studies included in the systematic reviews served as the reference standard for relevant articles. We further documented whether relevant articles were available as free full-texts. Results Compared with PubMed, the average search in Google Scholar retrieved twice as many relevant articles (PubMed: 11%; Google Scholar: 22%; P<.001). Precision was similar in both databases (PubMed: 6%; Google Scholar: 8%; P=.07). Google Scholar provided significantly greater access to free full-text publications (PubMed: 5%; Google Scholar: 14%; P<.001). Conclusions For quick clinical searches, Google Scholar returns twice as many relevant articles as PubMed and provides greater access to free full-text articles. PMID:23948488

  8. Thomas McKeown and Archibald Cochrane: a journey through the diffusion of their ideas.

    PubMed Central

    Alvarez-Dardet, C; Ruiz, M T

    1993-01-01

    In the 1970s Thomas McKeown and Archibald L Cochrane were two of the most influential voices in criticizing the dominance of medical thinking. A bibliometric study of the citations to McKeown's The Role of Medicine: Dream, Mirage or Nemesis and Cochrane's Effectiveness and Efficiency: Random Reflections on Health Services was performed from the publication of each book until 1988 to study how their ideas have been disseminated. During the study period 430 papers in the Science Citation Index or the Social Sciences Citation Index cited Cochrane's book, 133 cited McKeown's, and 166 cited both. The citations came mainly from original papers published in journals of internal medicine or public health and epidemiology (35%) and written by authors from the United States or the United Kingdom. Cochrane's book was cited most frequently in medical journals, suggesting a higher degree of penetration of his ideas among medical scientists. Although the dominance of original papers among the citations suggests that these books have been important in stimulating new knowledge, the main problems that McKeown and Cochrane identified--namely, the relatively small impact of clinical medicine on health outcomes and the poor use of scientific methods in clinical practice--are still with us. PMID:8499857

  9. SLIM: an alternative Web interface for MEDLINE/PubMed searches - a preliminary study.

    PubMed

    Muin, Michael; Fontelo, Paul; Liu, Fang; Ackerman, Michael

    2005-12-01

    With the rapid growth of medical information and the pervasiveness of the Internet, online search and retrieval systems have become indispensable tools in medicine. The progress of Web technologies can provide expert searching capabilities to non-expert information seekers. The objective of the project is to create an alternative search interface for MEDLINE/PubMed searches using JavaScript slider bars. SLIM, or Slider Interface for MEDLINE/PubMed searches, was developed with PHP and JavaScript. Interactive slider bars in the search form controlled search parameters such as limits, filters and MeSH terminologies. Connections to PubMed were done using the Entrez Programming Utilities (E-Utilities). Custom scripts were created to mimic the automatic term mapping process of Entrez. Page generation times for both local and remote connections were recorded. Alpha testing by developers showed SLIM to be functionally stable. Page generation times to simulate loading times were recorded the first week of alpha and beta testing. Average page generation times for the index page, previews and searches were 2.94 milliseconds, 0.63 seconds and 3.84 seconds, respectively. Eighteen physicians from the US, Australia and the Philippines participated in the beta testing and provided feedback through an online survey. Most users found the search interface user-friendly and easy to use. Information on MeSH terms and the ability to instantly hide and display abstracts were identified as distinctive features. SLIM can be an interactive time-saving tool for online medical literature research that improves user control and capability to instantly refine and refocus search strategies. With continued development and by integrating search limits, methodology filters, MeSH terms and levels of evidence, SLIM may be useful in the practice of evidence-based medicine.

  10. Net improvement of correct answers to therapy questions after pubmed searches: pre/post comparison.

    PubMed

    McKibbon, Kathleen Ann; Lokker, Cynthia; Keepanasseril, Arun; Wilczynski, Nancy L; Haynes, R Brian

    2013-11-08

    Clinicians search PubMed for answers to clinical questions although it is time consuming and not always successful. To determine if PubMed used with its Clinical Queries feature to filter results based on study quality would improve search success (more correct answers to clinical questions related to therapy). We invited 528 primary care physicians to participate, 143 (27.1%) consented, and 111 (21.0% of the total and 77.6% of those who consented) completed the study. Participants answered 14 yes/no therapy questions and were given 4 of these (2 originally answered correctly and 2 originally answered incorrectly) to search using either the PubMed main screen or PubMed Clinical Queries narrow therapy filter via a purpose-built system with identical search screens. Participants also picked 3 of the first 20 retrieved citations that best addressed each question. They were then asked to re-answer the original 14 questions. We found no statistically significant differences in the rates of correct or incorrect answers using the PubMed main screen or PubMed Clinical Queries. The rate of correct answers increased from 50.0% to 61.4% (95% CI 55.0%-67.8%) for the PubMed main screen searches and from 50.0% to 59.1% (95% CI 52.6%-65.6%) for Clinical Queries searches. These net absolute increases of 11.4% and 9.1%, respectively, included previously correct answers changing to incorrect at a rate of 9.5% (95% CI 5.6%-13.4%) for PubMed main screen searches and 9.1% (95% CI 5.3%-12.9%) for Clinical Queries searches, combined with increases in the rate of being correct of 20.5% (95% CI 15.2%-25.8%) for PubMed main screen searches and 17.7% (95% CI 12.7%-22.7%) for Clinical Queries searches. PubMed can assist clinicians answering clinical questions with an approximately 10% absolute rate of improvement in correct answers. This small increase includes more correct answers partially offset by a decrease in previously correct answers.

  11. Comparing Medline citations using modified N-grams

    PubMed Central

    Nawab, Rao Muhammad Adeel; Stevenson, Mark; Clough, Paul

    2014-01-01

    Objective We aim to identify duplicate pairs of Medline citations, particularly when the documents are not identical but contain similar information. Materials and methods Duplicate pairs of citations are identified by comparing word n-grams in pairs of documents. N-grams are modified using two approaches which take account of the fact that the document may have been altered. These are: (1) deletion, an item in the n-gram is removed; and (2) substitution, an item in the n-gram is substituted with a similar term obtained from the Unified Medical Language System  Metathesaurus. N-grams are also weighted using a score derived from a language model. Evaluation is carried out using a set of 520 Medline citation pairs, including a set of 260 manually verified duplicate pairs obtained from the Deja Vu database. Results The approach accurately detects duplicate Medline document pairs with an F1 measure score of 0.99. Allowing for word deletions and substitution improves performance. The best results are obtained by combining scores for n-grams of length 1–5 words. Discussion Results show that the detection of duplicate Medline citations can be improved by modifying n-grams and that high performance can also be obtained using only unigrams (F1=0.959), particularly when allowing for substitutions of alternative phrases. PMID:23715801

  12. Issues in the incorporation of economic perspectives and evidence into Cochrane reviews.

    PubMed

    Shemilt, Ian; McDaid, David; Marsh, Kevin; Henderson, Catherine; Bertranou, Evelina; Mallander, Jacqueline; Drummond, Mike; Mugford, Miranda; Vale, Luke

    2013-09-20

    Methods for systematic reviews of the effects of health interventions have focused mainly on addressing the question of 'What works?' or 'Is this intervention effective in achieving one or more specific outcomes?' Addressing the question 'Is it worth it given the resources available?' has received less attention. This latter question can be addressed by applying an economic lens to the systematic review process.This paper reflects on the value and desire for the consideration by end users for coverage of an economic perspective in a Cochrane review and outlines two potential approaches and future directions. Two frameworks to guide review authors who are seeking to include an economic perspective are outlined. The first involves conducting a full systematic review of economic evaluations that is integrated into a review of intervention effects. The second involves developing a brief economic commentary. The two approaches share a set of common stages but allow the tailoring of the economic component of the Cochrane review to the skills and resources available to the review team. The number of studies using the methods outlined in the paper is limited, and further examples are needed both to explore the value of these approaches and to further develop them. The rate of progress will hinge on the organisational leadership, capacity and resources available to the CCEMG, author teams and other Cochrane entities. Particular methodological challenges to overcome relate to understanding the key economic trade-offs and casual relationships for a given decision problem and informing the development of evaluations designed to support local decision-makers. Methods for incorporating economic perspectives and evidence into Cochrane intervention reviews are established. Their role is not to provide a precise estimate of 'cost-effectiveness' but rather to help end-users of Cochrane reviews to determine the implications of the economic components of reviews for their own specific

  13. Tracking Australian health and medical research expenditure with a PubMed bibliometric method.

    PubMed

    Mendis, Kumara; Bailey, Jannine; McLean, Rick

    2015-06-01

    To assess Australian health and medical research (HMR) investment returns by measuring the trends in HMR expenditure and PubMed publications by Australian authors. Bibliometric analysis collating Australian HMR expenditure reported by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare and Australian HMR publications indexed in PubMed. Similar methods were applied to data from the United Kingdom and New Zealand. From financial year 2000/01 through 2011/12, HMR investment increased by 232% from $1.49 to $4.94 billion (current prices adjusted for inflation), while PubMed publications increased by 123% from 10,696 to 23,818. The average HMR investment required for a single PubMed publication rose by 49% from $139,304 in 2000/01 to $207,364 in 2011/12. Quality analyses showed an increase in systematic reviews, cohort studies and clinical trials, and a decrease in publications in PubMed's core clinical journal collection. Comparisons with New Zealand and the United Kingdom showed that Australia has had the greatest overall percentage increase in gross publication numbers and publications per capita. Our analyses confirm that increased HMR expenditure is associated with an increase in HMR publications in PubMed. Tracking HMR investment outcomes using this method could be useful for future policy and funding decisions at a federal and specific institution level. © 2015 Public Health Association of Australia.

  14. Cardiac rehabilitation for people with heart disease: an overview of Cochrane systematic reviews.

    PubMed

    Anderson, L J; Taylor, R S

    2014-12-15

    Overviews are a new approach to summarising evidence and synthesising results from related systematic reviews. To conduct an overview of Cochrane systematic reviews to provide a contemporary review of the evidence for cardiac rehabilitation (CR), identify opportunities for merging or splitting existing Cochrane reviews, and identify current evidence gaps to inform new review titles. The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews was searched to identify reviews that address the objectives of this overview. Data presentation is descriptive with tabular presentations of review- and trial-level characteristics and results. The six included Cochrane systematic reviews were of high methodological quality and included 148 randomised controlled trials in 97,486 participants. Compared to usual care alone, exercise-based CR reduces hospital admissions and improves patient health related quality of life (HRQL) in low to moderate risk heart failure and coronary heart disease (CHD) patients. At 12 months or more follow-up, there was evidence of some reduction in mortality in patients with CHD. Psychological- and education-based interventions appear to have little impact on mortality or morbidity but may improve HRQL. Home- and centre-based programmes are equally effective in improving HRQL at similar costs. Selected interventions can increase the uptake of CR programmes but evidence to support interventions that improve adherence is weak. This overview confirms that exercise-based CR is effective and safe in the management of clinically stable heart failure and post-MI and PCI patients. We discuss the implications of this overview on the future direction of the Cochrane CR reviews portfolio. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

  15. Pharmacokinetic drug-drug interaction and their implication in clinical management

    PubMed Central

    Palleria, Caterina; Di Paolo, Antonello; Giofrè, Chiara; Caglioti, Chiara; Leuzzi, Giacomo; Siniscalchi, Antonio; De Sarro, Giovambattista; Gallelli, Luca

    2013-01-01

    Drug-drug interactions (DDIs) are one of the commonest causes of medication error in developed countries, particularly in the elderly due to poly-therapy, with a prevalence of 20-40%. In particular, poly-therapy increases the complexity of therapeutic management and thereby the risk of clinically important DDIs, which can both induce the development of adverse drug reactions or reduce the clinical efficacy. DDIs can be classify into two main groups: pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic. In this review, using Medline, PubMed, Embase, Cochrane library and Reference lists we searched articles published until June 30 2012, and we described the mechanism of pharmacokinetic DDIs focusing the interest on their clinical implications. PMID:24516494

  16. An automatic method to generate domain-specific investigator networks using PubMed abstracts.

    PubMed

    Yu, Wei; Yesupriya, Ajay; Wulf, Anja; Qu, Junfeng; Gwinn, Marta; Khoury, Muin J

    2007-06-20

    Collaboration among investigators has become critical to scientific research. This includes ad hoc collaboration established through personal contacts as well as formal consortia established by funding agencies. Continued growth in online resources for scientific research and communication has promoted the development of highly networked research communities. Extending these networks globally requires identifying additional investigators in a given domain, profiling their research interests, and collecting current contact information. We present a novel strategy for building investigator networks dynamically and producing detailed investigator profiles using data available in PubMed abstracts. We developed a novel strategy to obtain detailed investigator information by automatically parsing the affiliation string in PubMed records. We illustrated the results by using a published literature database in human genome epidemiology (HuGE Pub Lit) as a test case. Our parsing strategy extracted country information from 92.1% of the affiliation strings in a random sample of PubMed records and in 97.0% of HuGE records, with accuracies of 94.0% and 91.0%, respectively. Institution information was parsed from 91.3% of the general PubMed records (accuracy 86.8%) and from 94.2% of HuGE PubMed records (accuracy 87.0). We demonstrated the application of our approach to dynamic creation of investigator networks by creating a prototype information system containing a large database of PubMed abstracts relevant to human genome epidemiology (HuGE Pub Lit), indexed using PubMed medical subject headings converted to Unified Medical Language System concepts. Our method was able to identify 70-90% of the investigators/collaborators in three different human genetics fields; it also successfully identified 9 of 10 genetics investigators within the PREBIC network, an existing preterm birth research network. We successfully created a web-based prototype capable of creating domain

  17. An automatic method to generate domain-specific investigator networks using PubMed abstracts

    PubMed Central

    Yu, Wei; Yesupriya, Ajay; Wulf, Anja; Qu, Junfeng; Gwinn, Marta; Khoury, Muin J

    2007-01-01

    Background Collaboration among investigators has become critical to scientific research. This includes ad hoc collaboration established through personal contacts as well as formal consortia established by funding agencies. Continued growth in online resources for scientific research and communication has promoted the development of highly networked research communities. Extending these networks globally requires identifying additional investigators in a given domain, profiling their research interests, and collecting current contact information. We present a novel strategy for building investigator networks dynamically and producing detailed investigator profiles using data available in PubMed abstracts. Results We developed a novel strategy to obtain detailed investigator information by automatically parsing the affiliation string in PubMed records. We illustrated the results by using a published literature database in human genome epidemiology (HuGE Pub Lit) as a test case. Our parsing strategy extracted country information from 92.1% of the affiliation strings in a random sample of PubMed records and in 97.0% of HuGE records, with accuracies of 94.0% and 91.0%, respectively. Institution information was parsed from 91.3% of the general PubMed records (accuracy 86.8%) and from 94.2% of HuGE PubMed records (accuracy 87.0). We demonstrated the application of our approach to dynamic creation of investigator networks by creating a prototype information system containing a large database of PubMed abstracts relevant to human genome epidemiology (HuGE Pub Lit), indexed using PubMed medical subject headings converted to Unified Medical Language System concepts. Our method was able to identify 70–90% of the investigators/collaborators in three different human genetics fields; it also successfully identified 9 of 10 genetics investigators within the PREBIC network, an existing preterm birth research network. Conclusion We successfully created a web-based prototype

  18. Quantity and quality assessment of randomized controlled trials on orthodontic practice in PubMed.

    PubMed

    Shimada, Tatsuo; Takayama, Hisako; Nakamura, Yoshiki

    2010-07-01

    To find current high-quality evidence for orthodontic practice within a reasonable time, we tested the performance of a PubMed search. PubMed was searched using publication type randomized controlled trial and medical subject heading term "orthodontics" for articles published between 2003 and 2007. The PubMed search results were compared with those from a hand search of four orthodontic journals to determine the sensitivity of PubMed search. We evaluated the precision of the PubMed search result and assessed the quality of individual randomized controlled trials using the Jadad scale. Sensitivity and precision were 97.46% and 58.12%, respectively. In PubMed, of the 277 articles retrieved, 161 (58.12%) were randomized controlled trials on orthodontic practice, and 115 of the 161 articles (71.42%) were published in four orthodontic journals: American Journal of Orthodontics and Dentofacial Orthopedics, The Angle Orthodontist, the European Journal of Orthodontics, and the Journal of Orthodontics. Assessment by the Jadad scale revealed 60 high-quality randomized controlled trials on orthodontic practice, of which 45 (75%) were published in these four journals. PubMed is a highly desirable search engine for evidence-based orthodontic practice. To stay current and get high-quality evidence, it is reasonable to look through four orthodontic journals: American Journal of Orthodontics and Dentofacial Orthopedics, The Angle Orthodontist, the European Journal of Orthodontics, and the Journal of Orthodontics.

  19. Development and classification of an operational definition of complementary and alternative medicine for the Cochrane Collaboration

    PubMed Central

    Wieland, L. Susan; Manheimer, Eric; Berman, Brian M.

    2011-01-01

    Over the past decade the Cochrane Collaboration has been an increasingly important source of information on complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) therapies. From 2007 to 2008 the Cochrane CAM Field developed a topics list that allowed us to categorize all 396 Cochrane reviews related to CAM (as of The Cochrane Library, Issue 4, 2009). This topics list is an advance in making Cochrane reviews on CAM topics accessible to the public. In this paper, we discuss challenges in developing the topics list, including developing an operational definition of CAM, deciding which reviews should be included within the CAM Field’s scope, developing the structured list of CAM Field-specific topics, and determining where in the topics list the reviews should be placed. Although aspects of our operational definition of CAM are open to revision, a standardized definition provides us with an objective, reproducible and systematic method for defining and classifying CAM therapies. PMID:21717826

  20. Selecting a database for literature searches in nursing: MEDLINE or CINAHL?

    PubMed

    Brazier, H; Begley, C M

    1996-10-01

    This study compares the usefulness of the MEDLINE and CINAHL databases for students on post-registration nursing courses. We searched for nine topics, using title words only. Identical searches of the two databases retrieved 1162 references, of which 88% were in MEDLINE, 33% in CINAHL and 20% in both sources. The relevance of the references was assessed by student reviewers. The positive predictive value of CINAHL (70%) was higher than that of MEDLINE (54%), but MEDLINE produced more than twice as many relevant references as CINAHL. The sensitivity of MEDLINE was 85% (95% CI 82-88%), and that of CINAHL was 41% (95% CI 37-45%). To assess the ease of obtaining the references, we developed an index of accessibility, based on the holdings of a number of Irish and British libraries. Overall, 47% of relevant references were available in the students' own library, and 64% could be obtained within 48 hours. There was no difference between the two databases overall, but when two topics relating specifically to the organization of nursing were excluded, references found in MEDLINE were significantly more accessible. We recommend that MEDLINE should be regarded as the first choice of bibliographic database for any subject other than one related strictly to the organization of nursing.

  1. Exploring the Celiac Disease Mystery | NIH MedlinePlus the Magazine

    MedlinePlus

    Skip to main content NIH MedlinePlus the Magazine NIH MedlinePlus Salud Download the Current Issue PDF [2.68 mb] Trusted Health Information from the National Institutes of Health Home Current Issue ...

  2. Issues in the incorporation of economic perspectives and evidence into Cochrane reviews

    PubMed Central

    2013-01-01

    Background Methods for systematic reviews of the effects of health interventions have focused mainly on addressing the question of 'What works?’ or 'Is this intervention effective in achieving one or more specific outcomes?’ Addressing the question 'Is it worth it given the resources available?’ has received less attention. This latter question can be addressed by applying an economic lens to the systematic review process. This paper reflects on the value and desire for the consideration by end users for coverage of an economic perspective in a Cochrane review and outlines two potential approaches and future directions. Methods Two frameworks to guide review authors who are seeking to include an economic perspective are outlined. The first involves conducting a full systematic review of economic evaluations that is integrated into a review of intervention effects. The second involves developing a brief economic commentary. The two approaches share a set of common stages but allow the tailoring of the economic component of the Cochrane review to the skills and resources available to the review team. Results The number of studies using the methods outlined in the paper is limited, and further examples are needed both to explore the value of these approaches and to further develop them. The rate of progress will hinge on the organisational leadership, capacity and resources available to the CCEMG, author teams and other Cochrane entities. Particular methodological challenges to overcome relate to understanding the key economic trade-offs and casual relationships for a given decision problem and informing the development of evaluations designed to support local decision-makers. Conclusions Methods for incorporating economic perspectives and evidence into Cochrane intervention reviews are established. Their role is not to provide a precise estimate of 'cost-effectiveness’ but rather to help end-users of Cochrane reviews to determine the implications of the

  3. Teenage Pregnancy: MedlinePlus Health Topic

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    ... Articles References and abstracts from MEDLINE/PubMed (National Library of Medicine) Article: Exploring the Causes of Change in Adolescent Girls' Sexual Behaviour... ... (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development) ...

  4. Diabetic Diet: MedlinePlus Health Topic

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  5. Heart Surgery: MedlinePlus Health Topic

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  6. Liver Transplantation: MedlinePlus Health Topic

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  7. Pulmonary Rehabilitation: MedlinePlus Health Topic

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  8. Hearing Aids: MedlinePlus Health Topic

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    ... to health information from non-government Web sites. See our disclaimer about external links and our quality guidelines . About MedlinePlus Site Map FAQs Customer Support Get email updates Subscribe to ...

  9. SLIM: an alternative Web interface for MEDLINE/PubMed searches – a preliminary study

    PubMed Central

    Muin, Michael; Fontelo, Paul; Liu, Fang; Ackerman, Michael

    2005-01-01

    Background With the rapid growth of medical information and the pervasiveness of the Internet, online search and retrieval systems have become indispensable tools in medicine. The progress of Web technologies can provide expert searching capabilities to non-expert information seekers. The objective of the project is to create an alternative search interface for MEDLINE/PubMed searches using JavaScript slider bars. SLIM, or Slider Interface for MEDLINE/PubMed searches, was developed with PHP and JavaScript. Interactive slider bars in the search form controlled search parameters such as limits, filters and MeSH terminologies. Connections to PubMed were done using the Entrez Programming Utilities (E-Utilities). Custom scripts were created to mimic the automatic term mapping process of Entrez. Page generation times for both local and remote connections were recorded. Results Alpha testing by developers showed SLIM to be functionally stable. Page generation times to simulate loading times were recorded the first week of alpha and beta testing. Average page generation times for the index page, previews and searches were 2.94 milliseconds, 0.63 seconds and 3.84 seconds, respectively. Eighteen physicians from the US, Australia and the Philippines participated in the beta testing and provided feedback through an online survey. Most users found the search interface user-friendly and easy to use. Information on MeSH terms and the ability to instantly hide and display abstracts were identified as distinctive features. Conclusion SLIM can be an interactive time-saving tool for online medical literature research that improves user control and capability to instantly refine and refocus search strategies. With continued development and by integrating search limits, methodology filters, MeSH terms and levels of evidence, SLIM may be useful in the practice of evidence-based medicine. PMID:16321145

  10. Ontology-Driven Search and Triage: Design of a Web-Based Visual Interface for MEDLINE

    PubMed Central

    2017-01-01

    Background Diverse users need to search health and medical literature to satisfy open-ended goals such as making evidence-based decisions and updating their knowledge. However, doing so is challenging due to at least two major difficulties: (1) articulating information needs using accurate vocabulary and (2) dealing with large document sets returned from searches. Common search interfaces such as PubMed do not provide adequate support for exploratory search tasks. Objective Our objective was to improve support for exploratory search tasks by combining two strategies in the design of an interactive visual interface by (1) using a formal ontology to help users build domain-specific knowledge and vocabulary and (2) providing multi-stage triaging support to help mitigate the information overload problem. Methods We developed a Web-based tool, Ontology-Driven Visual Search and Triage Interface for MEDLINE (OVERT-MED), to test our design ideas. We implemented a custom searchable index of MEDLINE, which comprises approximately 25 million document citations. We chose a popular biomedical ontology, the Human Phenotype Ontology (HPO), to test our solution to the vocabulary problem. We implemented multistage triaging support in OVERT-MED, with the aid of interactive visualization techniques, to help users deal with large document sets returned from searches. Results Formative evaluation suggests that the design features in OVERT-MED are helpful in addressing the two major difficulties described above. Using a formal ontology seems to help users articulate their information needs with more accurate vocabulary. In addition, multistage triaging combined with interactive visualizations shows promise in mitigating the information overload problem. Conclusions Our strategies appear to be valuable in addressing the two major problems in exploratory search. Although we tested OVERT-MED with a particular ontology and document collection, we anticipate that our strategies can be

  11. Telehealthcare for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: Cochrane Review and meta-analysis

    PubMed Central

    McLean, Susannah; Nurmatov, Ulugbek; Liu, Joseph LY; Pagliari, Claudia; Car, Josip; Sheikh, Aziz

    2012-01-01

    Background Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is common. Telehealthcare, involving personalised health care over a distance, is seen as having the potential to improve care for people with COPD. Aim To systematically review the effectiveness of telehealthcare interventions in COPD to improve clinical and process outcomes. Design and setting Cochrane Systematic Review of randomised controlled trials. Methods The study involved searching the Cochrane Airways Group Register of Trials, which is derived from the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, MEDLINE®, embase™, and CINAHL®, as well as searching registers of ongoing and unpublished trials. Randomised controlled trials comparing a telehealthcare intervention with a control intervention in people with a clinical diagnosis of COPD were identified. The main outcomes of interest were quality of life and risk of emergency department visit, hospitalisation, and death. Two authors independently selected trials for inclusion and extracted data. Study quality was assessed using the Cochrane Collaboration’s risk of bias method. Meta-analysis was undertaken using fixed effect and/or random effects modelling. Results Ten randomised controlled trials were included. Telehealthcare did not improve COPD quality of life: mean difference –6.57 (95% confidence interval [CI] = –13.62 to 0.48). However, there was a significant reduction in the odds ratios (ORs) of emergency department attendance (OR = 0.27; 95% CI = 0.11 to 0.66) and hospitalisation (OR = 0.46; 95% CI = 0.33 to 0.65). There was a non-significant change in the OR of death (OR = 1.05; 95% CI = 0.63 to 1.75). Conclusion In COPD, telehealthcare interventions can significantly reduce the risk of emergency department attendance and hospitalisation, but has little effect on the risk of death. PMID:23211177

  12. Power and sample size evaluation for the Cochran-Mantel-Haenszel mean score (Wilcoxon rank sum) test and the Cochran-Armitage test for trend.

    PubMed

    Lachin, John M

    2011-11-10

    The power of a chi-square test, and thus the required sample size, are a function of the noncentrality parameter that can be obtained as the limiting expectation of the test statistic under an alternative hypothesis specification. Herein, we apply this principle to derive simple expressions for two tests that are commonly applied to discrete ordinal data. The Wilcoxon rank sum test for the equality of distributions in two groups is algebraically equivalent to the Mann-Whitney test. The Kruskal-Wallis test applies to multiple groups. These tests are equivalent to a Cochran-Mantel-Haenszel mean score test using rank scores for a set of C-discrete categories. Although various authors have assessed the power function of the Wilcoxon and Mann-Whitney tests, herein it is shown that the power of these tests with discrete observations, that is, with tied ranks, is readily provided by the power function of the corresponding Cochran-Mantel-Haenszel mean scores test for two and R > 2 groups. These expressions yield results virtually identical to those derived previously for rank scores and also apply to other score functions. The Cochran-Armitage test for trend assesses whether there is an monotonically increasing or decreasing trend in the proportions with a positive outcome or response over the C-ordered categories of an ordinal independent variable, for example, dose. Herein, it is shown that the power of the test is a function of the slope of the response probabilities over the ordinal scores assigned to the groups that yields simple expressions for the power of the test. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  13. Improving links between literature and biological data with text mining: a case study with GEO, PDB and MEDLINE

    PubMed Central

    Névéol, Aurélie; Wilbur, W. John; Lu, Zhiyong

    2012-01-01

    High-throughput experiments and bioinformatics techniques are creating an exploding volume of data that are becoming overwhelming to keep track of for biologists and researchers who need to access, analyze and process existing data. Much of the available data are being deposited in specialized databases, such as the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) for microarrays or the Protein Data Bank (PDB) for protein structures and coordinates. Data sets are also being described by their authors in publications archived in literature databases such as MEDLINE and PubMed Central. Currently, the curation of links between biological databases and the literature mainly relies on manual labour, which makes it a time-consuming and daunting task. Herein, we analysed the current state of link curation between GEO, PDB and MEDLINE. We found that the link curation is heterogeneous depending on the sources and databases involved, and that overlap between sources is low, <50% for PDB and GEO. Furthermore, we showed that text-mining tools can automatically provide valuable evidence to help curators broaden the scope of articles and database entries that they review. As a result, we made recommendations to improve the coverage of curated links, as well as the consistency of information available from different databases while maintaining high-quality curation. Database URLs: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/, http://www.rcsb.org/pdb/ PMID:22685160

  14. Update on the treatment of narcolepsy: clinical efficacy of pitolisant

    PubMed Central

    Calik, Michael W

    2017-01-01

    Narcolepsy is a neurological disease that affects 1 in 2,000 individuals and is characterized by excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS). In 60–70% of individuals with narcolepsy, it is also characterized by cataplexy or a sudden loss of muscle tone that is triggered by positive or negative emotions. Narcolepsy decreases the quality of life of the afflicted individuals. Currently used drugs treat EDS alone (modafinil/armodafinil, methylphenidate, and amphetamine), cataplexy alone (“off-label” use of antidepressants), or both EDS and cataplexy (sodium oxybate). These drugs have abuse, tolerability, and adherence issues. A greater diversity of drug options is needed to treat narcolepsy. The small molecule drug, pitolisant, acts as an inverse agonist/antagonist at the H3 receptor, thus increasing histaminergic tone in the wake promoting system of the brain. Pitolisant has been studied in animal models of narcolepsy and used in clinical trials as a treatment for narcolepsy. A comprehensive search of online databases (eg, Medline, PubMed, EMBASE, the Cochrane Library Database, Ovid MEDLINE, Europe PubMed Central, EBSCOhost CINAHL, ProQuest Research Library, Google Scholar, and ClinicalTrials.gov) was performed. Nonrandomized and randomized studies were included. This review focuses on the outcomes of four clinical trials of pitolisant to treat narcolepsy. These four trials show that pitolisant is an effective drug to treat EDS and cataplexy in narcolepsy. PMID:28490912

  15. Cochrane review: virtual reality for stroke rehabilitation.

    PubMed

    Laver, K; George, S; Thomas, S; Deutsch, J E; Crotty, M

    2012-09-01

    Virtual reality and interactive video gaming are innovative therapy approaches in the field of stroke rehabilitation. The primary objective of this review was to determine the effectiveness of virtual reality on motor function after stroke. The impact on secondary outcomes including activities of daily living was also assessed. Randomised and quasi-randomised controlled trials that compared virtual reality with an alternative or no intervention were included in the review. The authors searched the Cochrane Stroke Group Trials Register, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, electronic databases, trial registers, reference lists, Dissertation Abstracts, conference proceedings and contacted key researchers and virtual reality manufacturers. Search results were independently examined by two review authors to identify studies meeting the inclusion criteria. Nineteen studies with a total of 565 participants were included in the review. Variation in intervention approaches and outcome data collected limited the extent to which studies could be compared. Virtual reality was found to be significantly more effective than conventional therapy in improving upper limb function (standardised mean difference, SMD) 0.53, 95% confidence intervals [CI] 0.25 to 0.81)) based on seven studies, and activities of daily living (ADL) function (SMD 0.81, 95% CI 0.39 to 1.22) based on three studies. No statistically significant effects were found for grip strength (based on two studies) or gait speed (based on three studies). Virtual reality appears to be a promising approach however, further studies are required to confirm these findings.

  16. Birth Weight: MedlinePlus Health Topic

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    ... Articles References and abstracts from MEDLINE/PubMed (National Library of Medicine) Article: Effects of abnormal 75 g oral glucose tolerance test at different... ... (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development) ...

  17. E-Cigarettes: MedlinePlus Health Topic

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    ... Abuse) Clinical Trials ClinicalTrials.gov: Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems (National Institutes of Health) Journal Articles References and abstracts from MEDLINE/PubMed (National Library of Medicine) Article: Changes in Electronic Cigarette Use ...

  18. Child Safety: MedlinePlus Health Topic

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    ... Infant and Newborn Care Internet Safety Motor Vehicle Safety School Health Other Languages Find health information in languages other than English on Child Safety Disclaimers MedlinePlus links to health information from the ...

  19. NEMO: Extraction and normalization of organization names from PubMed affiliations.

    PubMed

    Jonnalagadda, Siddhartha Reddy; Topham, Philip

    2010-10-04

    Today, there are more than 18 million articles related to biomedical research indexed in MEDLINE, and information derived from them could be used effectively to save the great amount of time and resources spent by government agencies in understanding the scientific landscape, including key opinion leaders and centers of excellence. Associating biomedical articles with organization names could significantly benefit the pharmaceutical marketing industry, health care funding agencies and public health officials and be useful for other scientists in normalizing author names, automatically creating citations, indexing articles and identifying potential resources or collaborators. Large amount of extracted information helps in disambiguating organization names using machine-learning algorithms. We propose NEMO, a system for extracting organization names in the affiliation and normalizing them to a canonical organization name. Our parsing process involves multi-layered rule matching with multiple dictionaries. The system achieves more than 98% f-score in extracting organization names. Our process of normalization that involves clustering based on local sequence alignment metrics and local learning based on finding connected components. A high precision was also observed in normalization. NEMO is the missing link in associating each biomedical paper and its authors to an organization name in its canonical form and the Geopolitical location of the organization. This research could potentially help in analyzing large social networks of organizations for landscaping a particular topic, improving performance of author disambiguation, adding weak links in the co-author network of authors, augmenting NLM's MARS system for correcting errors in OCR output of affiliation field, and automatically indexing the PubMed citations with the normalized organization name and country. Our system is available as a graphical user interface available for download along with this paper.

  20. Cochrane Reviews in Obstetrics and Gynecology: What is the Contribution of Indian Studies?

    PubMed

    Radhika, A G; Pandey, Garima; Singh, Nilanchali; Sinha, Anju

    2016-10-01

    Cochrane reviews aim to produce evidence for health care practice globally including India. We wanted to assess the contribution of Indian origin studies in developing these systematic reviews in the field of obstetrics and gynecology. The objective of this study is to determine the number of Indian origin studies in obstetrics and gynecology which provided conclusive data and hence contributed toward formulating Cochrane Reviews in Obstetrics and Gynecology. A total of 910 Cochrane reviews were accessed from gynecology and pregnancy and child birth list from Cochrane health topics. The details of studies included for each review were accessed from references section. Indian origin studies were then identified from this for further analysis. Of the total 910 Cochrane reviews available on the subject of obstetrics and gynecology, 93 reviews had 225 studies of Indian origin. In the subject-wise categorisation, there were 404 and 506 systematic reviews in Gynecology and Obstetrics respectively. Indian studies were included in 32 and 61 systematic reviews of Gynecology and Obstetrics respectively. Regarding the details of 225 Indian studies included for our analysis, 162 were related to Obstetrics and 63 to Gynecology. The place of study could be ascertained in 81 of the 225 studies despite extensive search. Studies published after 1980 are available in the electronic databases while the earlier studies are difficult to access. Studies with duplicate mentions were counted once. There is an urgent continuing need for high quality research and its publication in India in the field of obstetrics and gynecology. Awareness building measures amongst Obstetricians and Gynecologists in this regard need to be addressed. Better quality studies are especially required in specific areas posing a challenge to our country, to improve the health care practices.

  1. Investing in updating: how do conclusions change when Cochrane systematic reviews are updated?

    PubMed Central

    French, Simon D; McDonald, Steve; McKenzie, Joanne E; Green, Sally E

    2005-01-01

    Background Cochrane systematic reviews aim to provide readers with the most up-to-date evidence on the effects of healthcare interventions. The policy of updating Cochrane reviews every two years consumes valuable time and resources and may not be appropriate for all reviews. The objective of this study was to examine the effect of updating Cochrane systematic reviews over a four year period. Methods This descriptive study examined all completed systematic reviews in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (CDSR) Issue 2, 1998. The latest version of each of these reviews was then identified in CDSR Issue 2, 2002 and changes in the review were described. For reviews that were updated within this time period and had additional studies, we determined whether their conclusion had changed and if there were factors that were predictive of this change. Results A total of 377 complete reviews were published in CDSR Issue 2, 1998. In Issue 2, 2002, 14 of these reviews were withdrawn and one was split, leaving 362 reviews to examine for the purpose of this study. Of these reviews, 254 (70%) were updated. Of these updated reviews, 23 (9%) had a change in conclusion. Both an increase in precision and a change in statistical significance of the primary outcome were predictive of a change in conclusion of the review. Conclusion The concerns around a lack of updating for some reviews may not be justified considering the small proportion of updated reviews that resulted in a changed conclusion. A priority-setting approach to the updating of Cochrane systematic reviews may be more appropriate than a time-based approach. Updating all reviews as frequently as every two years may not be necessary, however some reviews may need to be updated more often than every two years. PMID:16225692

  2. What do Cochrane systematic reviews say about interventions for vitamin D supplementation?

    PubMed

    Mateussi, Mariana Vendramin; Latorraca, Carolina de Oliveira Cruz; Daou, Júlia Pozetti; Martimbianco, Ana Luiza Cabrera; Riera, Rachel; Pacheco, Rafael Leite; Pachito, Daniela Vianna

    2017-01-01

    Despite the high prevalence of vitamin D supplementation, its use remains controversial. The objective of this review was to identify and summarize the evidence from Cochrane systematic reviews regarding vitamin D supplementation for preventing ortreating any clinical condition. Review of systematic reviews, conducted in the Discipline of Evidence-Based Medicine, Escola Paulista de Medicina, Universidade Federal de São Paulo. A search was conducted to identify all Cochrane systematic reviews that fulfilled the inclusion criteria. Titles and abstracts were screened by two authors. We included 27 Cochrane systematic reviews: 10 assessing use of vitamin D for prevention and 17 for treatment. The reviews found moderate to high quality of evidence regarding the benefit of vitamin D for pregnant women (prevention of adverse events: preterm birth risk [rate ratio, RR 0.36; 95% confidence interval, CI 0.14 to 0.93] and low birthweight risk [RR 0.40; 95% CI 0.24 to 0.67]) and for asthma patients (reduction of severe exacerbations [RR 0.63; 95% CI 0.45 to 0.88]). No benefit was found regarding vitamin D supplementation alone (without calcium) for preventing hip or any new fracture. For all other outcomes assessed under various conditions, the current quality of evidence is low or unknown, and therefore insufficient for any recommendation. Based on moderate to high quality of evidence, the Cochrane systematic reviews included here showed that there were some benefits from vitamin D supplementation for pregnant women and asthma patients and no benefits for preventing fractures.

  3. Exercises for adolescent idiopathic scoliosis: a Cochrane systematic review.

    PubMed

    Romano, Michele; Minozzi, Silvia; Zaina, Fabio; Saltikov, Josette Bettany; Chockalingam, Nachiappan; Kotwicki, Tomasz; Hennes, Axel Maier; Negrini, Stefano

    2013-06-15

    Systematic review of interventions. To evaluate the efficacy of scoliosis-specific exercise (SSE) in adolescent patients with adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS). AIS is a 3-dimensional deformity of the spine. Although AIS can progress during growth and cause a surface deformity, it is usually not symptomatic. However, in adulthood, if the final spinal curvature surpasses a certain critical threshold, the risk of health problems and curve progression is increased. The use of SSEs to reduce progression of AIS and postpone or avoid other more invasive treatments is controversial. The following databases (up to March 30, 2011) were searched with no language limitations: CENTRAL (The Cochrane Library 2011, issue 2), MEDLINE (from January 1966), EMBASE (from January 1980), CINHAL (from January 1982), SPORTDiscus (from January 1975), PsycINFO (from January 1887), and PEDro (from January 1929). We screened reference lists of articles and conducted an extensive hand search of gray literature. randomized controlled trials and prospective cohort studies with a control group comparing exercises with no treatment, other treatment, surgery, and different types of exercises. Two review authors independently selected studies, assessed risk of bias and extracted data. Two studies (154 participants) were included. There is low-quality evidence from 1 randomized controlled study that exercises as an adjunctive to other conservative treatments to increase the efficacy of these treatments (thoracic curve reduced: mean difference 9.00, [95% confidence interval, 5.47-12.53]; lumbar curve reduced: mean difference 8.00, [95% confidence interval, 5.08-10.92]). There is very low-quality evidence from a prospective controlled cohort study that SSEs structured within an exercise program can reduce brace prescription (risk ratio, 0.24; [95% confidence interval, 0.06-1.04]) as compared with "usual physiotherapy" [many different kinds of general exercises according to the preferences of the

  4. Systematic review with meta-analysis: online psychological interventions for mental and physical health outcomes in gastrointestinal disorders including irritable bowel syndrome and inflammatory bowel disease.

    PubMed

    Hanlon, I; Hewitt, C; Bell, K; Phillips, A; Mikocka-Walus, A

    2018-06-14

    Online psychotherapy has been successfully used as supportive treatment in many chronic illnesses. However, there is a lack of evidence on its role in the management of gastrointestinal (GI) diseases. To examine whether online psychological interventions improve mental and physical outcomes in gastrointestinal diseases. We searched CINAHL Plus, MEDLINE, EMBASE, Health Management Information Consortium, PsycINFO, British Nursing Index, Cochrane Library, a specialised register of the IBD/FBD Cochrane Group, MEDLINE (PubMed) WHO International Clinical Trial Registry, ClinicalTrials.gov, and reference lists of all papers included in the review. The Cochrane Risk of Bias Tool was used to assess internal validity. Where possible, data were pooled using random-effects meta-analysis. We identified 11 publications (encompassing nine studies) meeting inclusion criteria. One study had a high risk of selection bias (allocation concealment), all studies had a high risk of performance and detection bias. Eight studies were included in the meta-analyses (6 on irritable bowel syndrome [IBS] and two on inflammatory bowel disease [IBD]). Online cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) was shown to significantly improve gastrointestinal symptom-specific anxiety (MD: -8.51, 95% CI -12.99 to -4.04, P = 0.0002) and lessen symptom-induced disability (MD: -2.78, 95% CI -5.43 to -0.12, P = 0.04) in IBS post intervention. There was no significant effect of online CBT on any other outcomes in IBS. No significant effect of online psychotherapy was demonstrated in IBD. There is insufficient evidence to demonstrate the effectiveness of online CBT to manage mental and physical outcomes in gastrointestinal diseases. © 2018 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

  5. Cochrane Systematic Reviews of Chinese Herbal Medicines: An Overview

    PubMed Central

    Hu, Jing; Zhang, Junhua; Zhao, Wei; Zhang, Yongling; Zhang, Li; Shang, Hongcai

    2011-01-01

    Objectives Our study had two objectives: a) to systematically identify all existing systematic reviews of Chinese herbal medicines (CHM) published in Cochrane Library; b) to assess the methodological quality of included reviews. Methodology/Principal Findings We performed a systematic search of the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (CDSR, Issue 5, 2010) to identify all reviews of CHM. A total of fifty-eight reviews were eligible for our study. Twenty-one of the included reviews had at least one Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) practitioner as its co-author. 7 reviews didn't include any primary study, the remaining reviews (n = 51) included a median of 9 studies and 936 participants. 50% of reviews were last assessed as up-to-date prior to 2008. The questions addressed by 39 reviews were broad in scope, in which 9 reviews combined studies with different herbal medicines. For OQAQ, the mean of overall quality score (item 10) was 5.05 (95% CI; 4.58-5.52). All reviews assessed the methodological quality of primary studies, 16% of included primary studies used adequate sequence generation and 7% used adequate allocation concealment. Of the 51 nonempty reviews, 23 reviews were reported as being inconclusive, while 27 concluded that there might be benefit of CHM, which was limited by the poor quality or inadequate quantity of included studies. 58 reviews reported searching a median of seven electronic databases, while 10 reviews did not search any Chinese database. Conclusions Now CDSR has included large numbers of CHM reviews, our study identified some areas which could be improved, such as almost half of included reviews did not have the participation of TCM practitioners and were not up-to-date according to Cochrane criteria, some reviews pooled the results of different herbal medicines and ignored the searching of Chinese databases. PMID:22174870

  6. MedlinePlus Connect: How it Works

    MedlinePlus

    ... it looks depends on how it is implemented. Web Application The Web application returns a formatted response ... for more examples of Web Application response pages. Web Service The MedlinePlus Connect REST-based Web service ...

  7. Female Infertility: MedlinePlus Health Topic

    MedlinePlus

    ... Also in Spanish Treatments and Therapies Assisted Reproductive Technology: MedlinePlus Health Topic (National Library of Medicine) Also in Spanish Fertility Treatments for Females (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development) Also in Spanish Intrauterine ...

  8. Net Improvement of Correct Answers to Therapy Questions After PubMed Searches: Pre/Post Comparison

    PubMed Central

    Keepanasseril, Arun

    2013-01-01

    Background Clinicians search PubMed for answers to clinical questions although it is time consuming and not always successful. Objective To determine if PubMed used with its Clinical Queries feature to filter results based on study quality would improve search success (more correct answers to clinical questions related to therapy). Methods We invited 528 primary care physicians to participate, 143 (27.1%) consented, and 111 (21.0% of the total and 77.6% of those who consented) completed the study. Participants answered 14 yes/no therapy questions and were given 4 of these (2 originally answered correctly and 2 originally answered incorrectly) to search using either the PubMed main screen or PubMed Clinical Queries narrow therapy filter via a purpose-built system with identical search screens. Participants also picked 3 of the first 20 retrieved citations that best addressed each question. They were then asked to re-answer the original 14 questions. Results We found no statistically significant differences in the rates of correct or incorrect answers using the PubMed main screen or PubMed Clinical Queries. The rate of correct answers increased from 50.0% to 61.4% (95% CI 55.0%-67.8%) for the PubMed main screen searches and from 50.0% to 59.1% (95% CI 52.6%-65.6%) for Clinical Queries searches. These net absolute increases of 11.4% and 9.1%, respectively, included previously correct answers changing to incorrect at a rate of 9.5% (95% CI 5.6%-13.4%) for PubMed main screen searches and 9.1% (95% CI 5.3%-12.9%) for Clinical Queries searches, combined with increases in the rate of being correct of 20.5% (95% CI 15.2%-25.8%) for PubMed main screen searches and 17.7% (95% CI 12.7%-22.7%) for Clinical Queries searches. Conclusions PubMed can assist clinicians answering clinical questions with an approximately 10% absolute rate of improvement in correct answers. This small increase includes more correct answers partially offset by a decrease in previously correct answers

  9. Endometriosis: an overview of Cochrane Reviews.

    PubMed

    Brown, Julie; Farquhar, Cindy

    2014-03-10

    This overview reports on interventions for pain relief and for subfertility in pre-menopausal women with clinically diagnosed endometriosis. The objective of this overview was to summarise the evidence from Cochrane systematic reviews on treatment options for women with pain or subfertility associated with endometriosis. Published Cochrane systematic reviews reporting pain or fertility outcomes in women with clinically diagnosed endometriosis were eligible for inclusion in the overview. We also identified Cochrane reviews in preparation (protocols and titles) for future inclusion. The reviews, protocols and titles were identified by searching the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews and Archie (the Cochrane information management system) in March 2014.Pain-related outcomes of the overview were pain relief, clinical improvement or resolution and pain recurrence. Fertility-related outcomes were live birth, clinical pregnancy, ongoing pregnancy, miscarriage and adverse events.Selection of systematic reviews, data extraction and quality assessment were undertaken in duplicate. Review quality was assessed using the AMSTAR tool. The quality of the evidence for each outcome was assessed using GRADE methods. Review findings were summarised in the text and the data for each outcome were reported in 'Additional tables'. Seventeen systematic reviews published in The Cochrane Library were included. All the reviews were high quality. The quality of the evidence for specific comparisons ranged from very low to moderate. Limitations in the evidence included risk of bias in the primary studies, inconsistency between the studies, and imprecision in effect estimates. Pain relief (14 reviews) Gonadotrophin-releasing hormone (GnRH) analogues One systematic review reported low quality evidence of an overall benefit for GnRH analogues compared with placebo or no treatment. Ovulation suppression Five systematic reviews reported on medical treatment using ovulation suppression. There

  10. MET network in PubMed: a text-mined network visualization and curation system.

    PubMed

    Dai, Hong-Jie; Su, Chu-Hsien; Lai, Po-Ting; Huang, Ming-Siang; Jonnagaddala, Jitendra; Rose Jue, Toni; Rao, Shruti; Chou, Hui-Jou; Milacic, Marija; Singh, Onkar; Syed-Abdul, Shabbir; Hsu, Wen-Lian

    2016-01-01

    Metastasis is the dissemination of a cancer/tumor from one organ to another, and it is the most dangerous stage during cancer progression, causing more than 90% of cancer deaths. Improving the understanding of the complicated cellular mechanisms underlying metastasis requires investigations of the signaling pathways. To this end, we developed a METastasis (MET) network visualization and curation tool to assist metastasis researchers retrieve network information of interest while browsing through the large volume of studies in PubMed. MET can recognize relations among genes, cancers, tissues and organs of metastasis mentioned in the literature through text-mining techniques, and then produce a visualization of all mined relations in a metastasis network. To facilitate the curation process, MET is developed as a browser extension that allows curators to review and edit concepts and relations related to metastasis directly in PubMed. PubMed users can also view the metastatic networks integrated from the large collection of research papers directly through MET. For the BioCreative 2015 interactive track (IAT), a curation task was proposed to curate metastatic networks among PubMed abstracts. Six curators participated in the proposed task and a post-IAT task, curating 963 unique metastatic relations from 174 PubMed abstracts using MET.Database URL: http://btm.tmu.edu.tw/metastasisway. © The Author(s) 2016. Published by Oxford University Press.

  11. Overview of Reviews The prevention of eczema in infants and children: an overview of Cochrane and non-Cochrane reviews

    PubMed Central

    Foisy, Michelle; Boyle, Robert J.; Chalmers, Joanne R.; Simpson, Eric L.; Williams, Hywel C.

    2012-01-01

    Background Eczema is the most common inflammatory skin disease of childhood, characterized by an itchy red rash that usually involves the face and skin folds. There is currently no curative treatment for eczema, so the reduction of eczema incidence through disease prevention is a desirable goal. Potential interventions for preventing eczema include exclusive breastfeeding, hydrolysed protein formulas and soy formulas when bottle feeding, maternal antigen avoidance, omega oil supplementation, prebiotics and probiotics. Objectives This overview of reviews aims to present the current body of data from Cochrane and non-Cochrane reviews to provide the most up-to-date evidence on the efficacy and safety of interventions to prevent eczema in infants and children at different risk levels for developing allergic disease. Methods Our pool of Cochrane and non-Cochrane reviews came from the 2010 United Kingdom National Health Service (NHS) Evidence Skin Disorders Annual Evidence Updates Mapping Exercise on Atopic Eczema. This group used a comprehensive search strategy last conducted in August 2010 to identify all systematic reviews on eczema prevention. We identified all reviews that met our pre-specified inclusion criteria, and data were extracted, analysed, compiled into tables and synthesized using quantitative and qualitative methods. Main results Seven systematic reviews containing 39 relevant trials with 11 897 participants were included in this overview. Overall, there was no clear evidence that any of the main interventions reviewed reduced eczema incidence. In subgroup analyses of infants at high risk of allergic disease, an observational study found that exclusive breastfeeding for at least six months compared with introduction of solids at three to six months decreased the incidence of eczema by 60% (risk ratio (RR): 0.40; 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.21, 0.78), and a randomized controlled trial found that prebiotics compared with no prebiotics decreased

  12. Toilet Training: MedlinePlus Health Topic

    MedlinePlus

    ... Articles References and abstracts from MEDLINE/PubMed (National Library of Medicine) Article: Defecation-Specific Behavior in Children with Functional Defecation ... Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (National Institute of Child Health and Human ...

  13. Visualization of evidence-based medicine domain knowledge: production and citation of Cochrane systematic reviews.

    PubMed

    Shen, Jiantong; Li, Youping; Clarke, Mike; Du, Liang; Wang, Li; Zhong, Dake

    2013-02-01

    To evaluate the production and utilization of Cochrane systematic reviews (CSRs) and to analyze its influential factors, so as to improve the capacity of translating CSRs into practice. All CSRs and protocols were retrieved from the Cochrane Library (Issue 2, 2011) and citation data were retrieved from SCI database. Citation analysis was used to analyze the situation of CSRs production and utilization. CSR publication had grown from an annual average of 32 to 718 documents. Only one developing country was among the ten countries with the largest amount of publications. High-income countries accounted for 83% of CSR publications and 90.8% of cited counts. A total 34.7% of CSRs had a cited count of 0, whereas only 0.9% had been cited more than 50 times. Highly cited CSRs were published in England, Australia, Canada, USA and other high-income countries. The countries with a Cochrane center or a Cochrane methodology group had a greater capability of CSRs production and citing than others. The CSRs addressing the topics of diseases were more than those targeted at public health issues. There was a big gap in citations of different interventions even on the same topic. The capability of CSR production and utilization grew rapidly, but varied among countries and institutions, which was affected by several factors such as the capability of research, resources and the applicability of evidence. It is important to improve evidence translation through educating, training and prioritizing the problems based on real demands of end users. © 2013 Wiley Publishing Asia Pty Ltd and Chinese Cochrane Center, West China Hospital of Sichuan University.

  14. Multi-lingual search engine to access PubMed monolingual subsets: a feasibility study.

    PubMed

    Darmoni, Stéfan J; Soualmia, Lina F; Griffon, Nicolas; Grosjean, Julien; Kerdelhué, Gaétan; Kergourlay, Ivan; Dahamna, Badisse

    2013-01-01

    PubMed contains many articles in languages other than English but it is difficult to find them using the English version of the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) Thesaurus. The aim of this work is to propose a tool allowing access to a PubMed subset in one language, and to evaluate its performance. Translations of MeSH were enriched and gathered in the information system. PubMed subsets in main European languages were also added in our database, using a dedicated parser. The CISMeF generic semantic search engine was evaluated on the response time for simple queries. MeSH descriptors are currently available in 11 languages in the information system. All the 654,000 PubMed citations in French were integrated into CISMeF database. None of the response times exceed the threshold defined for usability (2 seconds). It is now possible to freely access biomedical literature in French using a tool in French; health professionals and lay people with a low English language may find it useful. It will be expended to several European languages: German, Spanish, Norwegian and Portuguese.

  15. PubMed Phrases, an open set of coherent phrases for searching biomedical literature

    PubMed Central

    Kim, Sun; Yeganova, Lana; Comeau, Donald C.; Wilbur, W. John; Lu, Zhiyong

    2018-01-01

    In biomedicine, key concepts are often expressed by multiple words (e.g., ‘zinc finger protein’). Previous work has shown treating a sequence of words as a meaningful unit, where applicable, is not only important for human understanding but also beneficial for automatic information seeking. Here we present a collection of PubMed® Phrases that are beneficial for information retrieval and human comprehension. We define these phrases as coherent chunks that are logically connected. To collect the phrase set, we apply the hypergeometric test to detect segments of consecutive terms that are likely to appear together in PubMed. These text segments are then filtered using the BM25 ranking function to ensure that they are beneficial from an information retrieval perspective. Thus, we obtain a set of 705,915 PubMed Phrases. We evaluate the quality of the set by investigating PubMed user click data and manually annotating a sample of 500 randomly selected noun phrases. We also analyze and discuss the usage of these PubMed Phrases in literature search. PMID:29893755

  16. Maternity leave in normal pregnancy.

    PubMed

    Leduc, Dean

    2011-08-01

    To assist maternity care providers in recognizing and discussing health- and illness-related issues in pregnancy and their relationship to maternity benefits. Published literature was retrieved through searches of PubMed or Medline, CINAHL, and The Cochrane Library in 2009 using appropriate controlled vocabulary (e.g., maternity benefits) and key words (e.g., maternity, benefits, pregnancy). Results were restricted to systematic reviews, randomized controlled trials/controlled clinical trials, and observational studies. There were no date or language restrictions. Searches were updated on a regular basis and incorporated in the guideline to December 2009. Grey (unpublished) literature was identified through searching the web sites of health technology assessment and health technology assessment-related agencies, clinical practice guideline collections, clinical trial registries, and national and international medical specialty societies.

  17. Anesthetic Considerations in Patients Undergoing Bariatric Surgery: A Review Article

    PubMed Central

    Soleimanpour, Hassan; Safari, Saeid; Sanaie, Sarvin; Nazari, Mehdi; Alavian, Seyed Moayed

    2017-01-01

    Context This article discusses the anesthetic considerations in patients undergoing bariatric surgery in the preoperative, intraoperative, and postoperative phases of surgery. Evidence Acquisition This review includes studies involving obese patients undergoing bariatric surgery. Searches have been conducted in PubMed, MEDLINE, EMBASE, Google Scholar, Scopus, and Cochrane Database of Systematic Review using the terms obese, obesity, bariatric, anesthesia, perioperative, preoperative, perioperative, postoperative, and their combinations. Results Obesity is a major worldwide health problem associated with many comorbidities. Bariatric surgery has been proposed as the best alternative treatment for extreme obese patients when all other therapeutic options have failed. Conclusions Anesthetists must completely assess the patients before the surgery to identify anesthesia- related potential risk factors and prepare for management during the surgery. PMID:29430407

  18. Laser-assisted treatment of dentinal hypersensitivity: a literature review

    PubMed Central

    Biagi, Roberto; Cossellu, Gianguido; Sarcina, Michele; Pizzamiglio, Ilaria Tina; Farronato, Giampietro

    2015-01-01

    Summary The purpose of this literature review was to evaluate the effectiveness of the laser-assisted treatment of dentinal hypersensitivity. A review with inclusion and exclusion criteria was performed from January 2009 to December 2014 with electronic data-bases: MedLine via PubMed, Science Direct and Cochrane Library. Research of paper magazines by hand was not considered. Forty-three articles were selected between literature reviews, in vitro studies, clinical trials, pilot and preliminary studies. The items were divided into laser-used groups for an accurate description, and then the reading of results into various typologies. Laser-assisted treatment reduces dentinal hypersensitivity-related pain, but also a psychosomatic component must be considered, so further studies and more suitable follow-ups are necessary. PMID:26941892

  19. Examining the relationship between infectious diseases and flooding in Europe: A systematic literature review and summary of possible public health interventions.

    PubMed

    Brown, Lisa; Murray, Virginia

    2013-01-01

    Introduction Many infectious diseases are sensitive to climatic changes; specifically, flooding. This systematic literature review aimed to strengthen the quality and completeness of evidence on infectious diseases following flooding, relevant to Europe. Methods A systematic literature review from 2004-2012 was performed. Focused searches of the following databases were conducted: Medline, Scopus, PubMed, Cochrane Library, and Evidence Aid. Personal communications with key informants were also reviewed. Results Thirty-eight studies met the inclusion criteria. Evidence suggested that water-borne, rodent-borne, and vector-borne diseases have been associated with flooding in Europe, although at a lower incidence than developing countries. Conclusion Disease surveillance and early warning systems, coupled with effective prevention and response capabilities, can reduce current and future vulnerability to infectious diseases following flooding.

  20. Central venous catheter-related infections in hematology and oncology: 2012 updated guidelines on diagnosis, management and prevention by the Infectious Diseases Working Party of the German Society of Hematology and Medical Oncology.

    PubMed

    Hentrich, M; Schalk, E; Schmidt-Hieber, M; Chaberny, I; Mousset, S; Buchheidt, D; Ruhnke, M; Penack, O; Salwender, H; Wolf, H-H; Christopeit, M; Neumann, S; Maschmeyer, G; Karthaus, M

    2014-05-01

    Cancer patients are at increased risk for central venous catheter-related infections (CRIs). Thus, a comprehensive, practical and evidence-based guideline on CRI in patients with malignancies is warranted. A panel of experts by the Infectious Diseases Working Party (AGIHO) of the German Society of Hematology and Medical Oncology (DGHO) has developed a guideline on CRI in cancer patients. Literature searches of the PubMed, Medline and Cochrane databases were carried out and consensus discussions were held. Recommendations on diagnosis, management and prevention of CRI in cancer patients are made, and the strength of the recommendation and the level of evidence are presented. This guideline is an evidence-based approach to the diagnosis, management and prevention of CRI in cancer patients.

  1. Anticonvulsants for preventing seizures in patients with chronic subdural haematoma.

    PubMed

    Ratilal, Bernardo O; Pappamikail, Lia; Costa, João; Sampaio, Cristina

    2013-06-06

    Anticonvulsant therapy is sometimes used prophylactically in patients with chronic subdural haematoma, although the benefit is unclear. To assess the effects of prophylactic anticonvulsants in patients with chronic subdural haematoma, in both the pre- and post-operative periods. We searched the Cochrane Injuries Group's Specialised Register, CENTRAL (The Cochrane Library), MEDLINE (OvidSP), EMBASE (OvidSP), PubMed, LILACS, and the databases clinicaltrials.gov, the WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform, and Current Controlled Trials. The search was through 27th March 2013. Randomised controlled trials comparing any anticonvulsant versus placebo or no intervention. Three authors screened the search results to identify relevant studies. No studies met the inclusion criteria for the review. No randomised controlled trials were identified. No formal recommendations can be made about the use of prophylactic anticonvulsants in patients with chronic subdural haematoma based on the literature currently available. There are no randomised controlled trials on this topic, and non-controlled studies have conflicting results. There is an urgent need for well-designed randomised controlled trials.

  2. RSCABS: An R package for performing the Rao-Scott Adjusted Cochran-Armitage trend test By Slices

    EPA Science Inventory

    RSCABS[3] (Rao-Scott adjusted Cochran-Armitage trend test By Slices) is a modification to the Rao-Scott[5] adjusted Cochran-Armitage trend test[1, 2] that allows for testing at each individual severity score often seen in histopathological data. The test was originally developed ...

  3. Google Scholar versus PubMed in locating primary literature to answer drug-related questions.

    PubMed

    Freeman, Maisha Kelly; Lauderdale, Stacy A; Kendrach, Michael G; Woolley, Thomas W

    2009-03-01

    Google Scholar linked more visitors to biomedical journal Web sites than did PubMed after the database's initial release; however, its usefulness in locating primary literature articles is unknown. To assess in both databases the availability of primary literature target articles; total number of citations; availability of free, full-text journal articles; and number of primary literature target articles retrieved by year within the first 100 citations of the search results. Drug information question reviews published in The Annals of Pharmacotherapy Drug Information Rounds column served as targets to determine the retrieval ability of Google Scholar and PubMed searches. Reviews printed in this column from January 2006 to June 2007 were eligible for study inclusion. Articles were chosen if at least 2 key words of the printed article were included in the PubMed Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) database, and these terms were searched in both databases. Twenty-two of 33 (67%) eligible Drug Information Rounds articles met the inclusion criteria. The median number of primary literature articles used in each of these articles was 6.5 (IQR 4.8, 8.3; mean +/- SD 8 +/- 5.4). No significant differences were found for the mean number of target primary literature articles located within the first 100 citations in Google Scholar and PubMed searches (5.1 +/- 3.9 vs 5.3 +/- 3.3; p = 0.868). Google Scholar searches located more total results than PubMed (2211.6 +/- 3999.5 vs 44.2 +/- 47.4; p = 0.019). The availability of free, full-text journal articles per Drug Information Rounds article was similar between the databases (1.8 +/- 1.7 vs 2.3 +/- 1.7; p = 0.325). More primary literature articles published prior to 2000 were located with Google Scholar searches compared with PubMed (62.8% vs 34.9%; p = 0.017); however, no statistically significant differences between the databases were observed for articles published after 2000 (66.4 vs 77.1; p = 0.074). No significant differences

  4. Skin Aging: MedlinePlus Health Topic

    MedlinePlus

    ... Specifics Bags Under Eyes (Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research) Also in Spanish Sagging Skin (American Society for Dermatologic Surgery) Clinical Trials ClinicalTrials.gov: Skin Aging (National Institutes of Health) Journal Articles References and abstracts from MEDLINE/PubMed (National ...

  5. Avoidable Ignorance and the Role of Cochrane and Campbell Reviews

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Gambrill, Eileen

    2015-01-01

    The Campbell and Cochrane Collaborations were created to reveal the evidentiary status of claims focusing especially on the effectiveness of specific interventions. Such reviews are constrained by the population of studies available and biases that may influence this availability such as preferred framing of problems. This highlights the…

  6. Parenting Training for Intellectually Disabled Parents: A Cochrane Systematic Review

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Coren, Esther; Thomae, Manuela; Hutchfield, Jemeela

    2011-01-01

    Objectives: This article presents a Cochrane/Campbell systematic review of the evidence on the effect of parent training to support the parenting of parents with intellectual disabilities. Method: Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) comparing parent training interventions for parents with intellectual disability with usual care or with a control…

  7. Comparison of CINAHL, EMBASE, and MEDLINE databases for the nurse researcher.

    PubMed

    Burnham, J; Shearer, B

    1993-01-01

    The purpose of this research was to determine which of three databases, CINAHL, EMBASE or MEDLINE, should be accessed when researching nursing topics. The three databases were searched for citations on topics selected by three nurse researchers and the results were compared. For the search of nursing care literature on a medical condition, it was helpful to search both CINAHL and MEDLINE. CINAHL provided the majority of relevant articles for the second search, on computers and privacy, but inclusion of MEDLINE and EMBASE enhanced retrieval somewhat. The search on substance abuse in pregnancy, not restricted to nursing literature, retrieved better results when searching both MEDLINE and EMBASE. Due to the nature and distribution of the nursing literature, it is especially important for the searcher to understand and respond to the focus of the researcher.

  8. A Review of Cochrane Systematic Reviews of Interventions Relevant to Orthoptic Practice.

    PubMed

    Rowe, Fiona J; Elliott, Sue; Gordon, Iris; Shah, Anupa

    2017-09-01

    To present an overview of the range of systematic reviews on intervention trials pertinent to orthoptic practice, produced by the Cochrane Eyes and Vision group (CEV). We searched the 2016 Cochrane Library database (31.03.2016) to identify completed reviews and protocols of direct relevance to orthoptic practice. These reviews are currently completed and published, available on www.thecochranelibrary.com (free to UK health employees) or via the CEV website (http://eyes.cochrane.org/) . We found 27 completed CEV reviews across the topics of strabismus, amblyopia, refractive errors, and low vision. Seven completed CEV protocols addressed topics of strabismus, amblyopia, refractive errors, low vision, and screening. We found 3 completed Cochrane Stroke reviews addressing visual field loss, eye movement impairment, and age-related vision loss. The systematic review process presents an important opportunity for any clinician to contribute to the establishment of reliable, evidence-based orthoptic practice. Each review has an abstract and plain language summary that many non-clinicians find useful, followed by a full copy of the review (background, objectives, methods, results, discussion) with a conclusion section that is divided into implications for practice and implications for research. The current reviews provide patients/parents/carers with information about various different conditions and treatment options, but also provide clinicians with a summary of the available evidence on interventions, to use as a guide for both clinical practice and future research planning. The reviews identified in this overview highlight the evidence available for effective interventions for strabismus, amblyopia, refractive errors, and low vision or stroke rehabilitation as well as the gaps in the evidence base. Thus, a demand exists for future robust, randomized, controlled trials of such interventions of importance in orthoptic practice.

  9. Cluster Randomised Trials in Cochrane Reviews: Evaluation of Methodological and Reporting Practice.

    PubMed

    Richardson, Marty; Garner, Paul; Donegan, Sarah

    2016-01-01

    Systematic reviews can include cluster-randomised controlled trials (C-RCTs), which require different analysis compared with standard individual-randomised controlled trials. However, it is not known whether review authors follow the methodological and reporting guidance when including these trials. The aim of this study was to assess the methodological and reporting practice of Cochrane reviews that included C-RCTs against criteria developed from existing guidance. Criteria were developed, based on methodological literature and personal experience supervising review production and quality. Criteria were grouped into four themes: identifying, reporting, assessing risk of bias, and analysing C-RCTs. The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews was searched (2nd December 2013), and the 50 most recent reviews that included C-RCTs were retrieved. Each review was then assessed using the criteria. The 50 reviews we identified were published by 26 Cochrane Review Groups between June 2013 and November 2013. For identifying C-RCTs, only 56% identified that C-RCTs were eligible for inclusion in the review in the eligibility criteria. For reporting C-RCTs, only eight (24%) of the 33 reviews reported the method of cluster adjustment for their included C-RCTs. For assessing risk of bias, only one review assessed all five C-RCT-specific risk-of-bias criteria. For analysing C-RCTs, of the 27 reviews that presented unadjusted data, only nine (33%) provided a warning that confidence intervals may be artificially narrow. Of the 34 reviews that reported data from unadjusted C-RCTs, only 13 (38%) excluded the unadjusted results from the meta-analyses. The methodological and reporting practices in Cochrane reviews incorporating C-RCTs could be greatly improved, particularly with regard to analyses. Criteria developed as part of the current study could be used by review authors or editors to identify errors and improve the quality of published systematic reviews incorporating C-RCTs.

  10. Clinical recommendations of Cochrane reviews in pediatric gastroenterology: systematic analysis.

    PubMed

    Goda, Yvonne; Sauer, Harald; Schöndorf, Dominik; Hennes, Pia; Gortner, Ludwig; Gräber, Stefan; Meyer, Sascha

    2015-01-01

    Systematic and up-to-date Cochrane reviews in pediatrics in general and in pediatric gastroenterology in particular are important tools in disseminating the best available evidence to the medical community, thus providing the physician at the bedside with invaluable information and recommendations with regard to specific clinical questions. A systematic literature review was conducted, including all Cochrane reviews published by the Cochrane Review Group in the field of pediatric gastroenterology between 1993 and 2012, with regard to the percentage of reviews that concluded that a certain intervention provided a benefit, percentage of reviews that concluded that a certain intervention should not be performed, and percentage of studies that concluded that the current level of evidence was inconclusive. In total, 86 reviews in the field of pediatric gastroenterology were included. The majority of reviews assessed pharmacological interventions (46/86); other important fields included prevention (15/86) and nutrition (9/86). A total of 33/86 reviews issued definite recommendations (positive, 19/86; negative, 14/86). The remaining 53/86 reviews were either inconclusive (24/86) or only of limited conclusiveness (29/86). The percentage of inconclusive reviews increased from 9% (1998-2002) to 19% (2003-2007; P < 0.05) to finally 24% (2008-2012) (P < 0.05). The three most common reasons for the need for further research were heterogeneity of studies (26/86), small number of patients (18/86), and insufficient data (16/86). Further high-quality research is necessary to increase the proportion of reviews with clear recommendations. Funding and research agencies are key to selecting the most appropriate research programs. © 2014 Japan Pediatric Society.

  11. PuReD-MCL: a graph-based PubMed document clustering methodology.

    PubMed

    Theodosiou, T; Darzentas, N; Angelis, L; Ouzounis, C A

    2008-09-01

    Biomedical literature is the principal repository of biomedical knowledge, with PubMed being the most complete database collecting, organizing and analyzing such textual knowledge. There are numerous efforts that attempt to exploit this information by using text mining and machine learning techniques. We developed a novel approach, called PuReD-MCL (Pubmed Related Documents-MCL), which is based on the graph clustering algorithm MCL and relevant resources from PubMed. PuReD-MCL avoids using natural language processing (NLP) techniques directly; instead, it takes advantage of existing resources, available from PubMed. PuReD-MCL then clusters documents efficiently using the MCL graph clustering algorithm, which is based on graph flow simulation. This process allows users to analyse the results by highlighting important clues, and finally to visualize the clusters and all relevant information using an interactive graph layout algorithm, for instance BioLayout Express 3D. The methodology was applied to two different datasets, previously used for the validation of the document clustering tool TextQuest. The first dataset involves the organisms Escherichia coli and yeast, whereas the second is related to Drosophila development. PuReD-MCL successfully reproduces the annotated results obtained from TextQuest, while at the same time provides additional insights into the clusters and the corresponding documents. Source code in perl and R are available from http://tartara.csd.auth.gr/~theodos/

  12. Data regarding articles retracted from PubMed indexed dental journals from India.

    PubMed

    Shamim, Thorakkal

    2018-06-01

    This data aimed to audit the articles retracted from PubMed indexed dental journals from India. The PubMed indexed journals considered are Indian Journal of Dental research, Journal of Indian Society of Periodontology, Contemporary Clinical Dentistry, Journal of Indian Society of Pedodontics and Preventive Dentistry, Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Pathology and Journal of Indian Prosthodontic Society for type of article, name of dental specialty, topic of individual dental specialties, causes for retraction of article and authorship trend of retracted articles using web-based search. Among PubMed indexed Indian dental journals,the number of retracted articles were as follows: Indian Journal of Dental research (4) followed by Journal of Indian Society of Periodontology (3), Contemporary Clinical Dentistry (3), Journal of Indian Society of Pedodontics and Preventive Dentistry (2), Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Pathology (2) and Journal of Indian Prosthodontic Society (1). Out of 15 retracted articles from PubMed indexed Indian dental journals, case reports (7) form a major share followed by original articles(6) and review articles (2). Among the dental specialties of retracted articles, oral pathology and microbiology (5) constitute the major share followed by periodontics (4), pedodontics (4), oral medicine and radiology (1) and prosthodontics (1). Duplicate publication (7), plagiarism (5) and authorship dispute (3) are the causes for the retraction of article.

  13. Producing Cochrane systematic reviews-a qualitative study of current approaches and opportunities for innovation and improvement.

    PubMed

    Turner, Tari; Green, Sally; Tovey, David; McDonald, Steve; Soares-Weiser, Karla; Pestridge, Charlotte; Elliott, Julian

    2017-08-01

    Producing high-quality, relevant systematic reviews and keeping them up to date is challenging. Cochrane is a leading provider of systematic reviews in health. For Cochrane to continue to contribute to improvements in heath, Cochrane Reviews must be rigorous, reliable and up to date. We aimed to explore existing models of Cochrane Review production and emerging opportunities to improve the efficiency and sustainability of these processes. To inform discussions about how to best achieve this, we conducted 26 interviews and an online survey with 106 respondents. Respondents highlighted the importance and challenge of creating reliable, timely systematic reviews. They described the challenges and opportunities presented by current production models, and they shared what they are doing to improve review production. They particularly highlighted significant challenges with increasing complexity of review methods; difficulty keeping authors on board and on track; and the length of time required to complete the process. Strong themes emerged about the roles of authors and Review Groups, the central actors in the review production process. The results suggest that improvements to Cochrane's systematic review production models could come from improving clarity of roles and expectations, ensuring continuity and consistency of input, enabling active management of the review process, centralising some review production steps; breaking reviews into smaller "chunks", and improving approaches to building capacity of and sharing information between authors and Review Groups. Respondents noted the important role new technologies have to play in enabling these improvements. The findings of this study will inform the development of new Cochrane Review production models and may provide valuable data for other systematic review producers as they consider how best to produce rigorous, reliable, up-to-date reviews.

  14. Pregnancy and Nutrition: MedlinePlus Health Topic

    MedlinePlus

    ... Healthy Weight (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development) ... Journal Articles References and abstracts from MEDLINE/PubMed (National Library of Medicine) Article: Effects of prenatal n-3 ...

  15. Metabolic Panel: MedlinePlus Health Topic

    MedlinePlus

    ... as tests of your cholesterol , protein levels, and liver function . You probably need to fast (not eat any ... What's this? GO National Institutes of Health ... government agencies. MedlinePlus also links to health information from non-government Web sites. See our disclaimer about external ...

  16. MedlinePlus® Everywhere: Access from Your Phone, Tablet or Desktop

    MedlinePlus

    ... gov/responsivefull.html MedlinePlus® Everywhere: Access from Your Phone, Tablet or Desktop To use the sharing features ... consistent user experience from a desktop, tablet, or phone. All users, regardless of how they access MedlinePlus, ...

  17. What do Cochrane systematic reviews say about probiotics as preventive interventions?

    PubMed

    Braga, Vinícius Lopes; Rocha, Luana Pompeu Dos Santos; Bernardo, Daniel Damasceno; Cruz, Carolina de Oliveira; Riera, Rachel

    2017-01-01

    Probiotics have been used for a range of clinical situations and their use is strongly encouraged by the media worldwide. This study identified and summarized all Cochrane systematic reviews about the preventive effects of probiotics in clinical practice. Review of systematic reviews, conducted in the Discipline of Evidence-Based Medicine, Escola Paulista de Medicina (EPM), Universidade Federal de São Paulo (Unifesp). We included all Cochrane reviews on any probiotics when they were used as preventive interventions and compared with no intervention, placebo or any other pharmacological or non-pharmacological intervention. 17 Cochrane systematic reviews fulfilled our inclusion criteria and were summarized in this report. None of the reviews included in the present study provided high-quality evidence for any outcome. The benefits from use of probiotics included decreased incidence of antibiotic-associated diarrhea and Clostridium difficile-associated diarrhea; decreased incidence of upper respiratory tract infections and duration of episodes; decreased need for antibiotics and absences from school due to colds; and decreased incidence of ventilator-associated pneumonia. Probiotics seem to decrease the incidence of gestational diabetes mellitus, birthweight, risk of vaginal infection and incidence of eczema. Despite the marketing and the benefits associated with probiotics, there is little scientific evidence supporting the use of probiotics. None of the reviews provided any high-quality evidence for prevention of illnesses through use of probiotics. More trials are needed to gain better knowledge of probiotics and to confirm when their use is beneficial and cost-effective.

  18. TwiMed: Twitter and PubMed Comparable Corpus of Drugs, Diseases, Symptoms, and Their Relations

    PubMed Central

    Miyao, Yusuke; Collier, Nigel

    2017-01-01

    Background Work on pharmacovigilance systems using texts from PubMed and Twitter typically target at different elements and use different annotation guidelines resulting in a scenario where there is no comparable set of documents from both Twitter and PubMed annotated in the same manner. Objective This study aimed to provide a comparable corpus of texts from PubMed and Twitter that can be used to study drug reports from these two sources of information, allowing researchers in the area of pharmacovigilance using natural language processing (NLP) to perform experiments to better understand the similarities and differences between drug reports in Twitter and PubMed. Methods We produced a corpus comprising 1000 tweets and 1000 PubMed sentences selected using the same strategy and annotated at entity level by the same experts (pharmacists) using the same set of guidelines. Results The resulting corpus, annotated by two pharmacists, comprises semantically correct annotations for a set of drugs, diseases, and symptoms. This corpus contains the annotations for 3144 entities, 2749 relations, and 5003 attributes. Conclusions We present a corpus that is unique in its characteristics as this is the first corpus for pharmacovigilance curated from Twitter messages and PubMed sentences using the same data selection and annotation strategies. We believe this corpus will be of particular interest for researchers willing to compare results from pharmacovigilance systems (eg, classifiers and named entity recognition systems) when using data from Twitter and from PubMed. We hope that given the comprehensive set of drug names and the annotated entities and relations, this corpus becomes a standard resource to compare results from different pharmacovigilance studies in the area of NLP. PMID:28468748

  19. PubMedReco: A Real-Time Recommender System for PubMed Citations.

    PubMed

    Samuel, Hamman W; Zaïane, Osmar R

    2017-01-01

    We present a recommender system, PubMedReco, for real-time suggestions of medical articles from PubMed, a database of over 23 million medical citations. PubMedReco can recommend medical article citations while users are conversing in a synchronous communication environment such as a chat room. Normally, users would have to leave their chat interface to open a new web browser window, and formulate an appropriate search query to retrieve relevant results. PubMedReco automatically generates the search query and shows relevant citations within the same integrated user interface. PubMedReco analyzes relevant keywords associated with the conversation and uses them to search for relevant citations using the PubMed E-utilities programming interface. Our contributions include improvements to the user experience for searching PubMed from within health forums and chat rooms, and a machine learning model for identifying relevant keywords. We demonstrate the feasibility of PubMedReco using BMJ's Doc2Doc forum discussions.

  20. Molecular Genetic Testing in Reward Deficiency Syndrome (RDS): Facts and Fiction.

    PubMed

    Blum, Kenneth; Badgaiyan, Rajendra D; Agan, Gozde; Fratantonio, James; Simpatico, Thomas; Febo, Marcelo; Haberstick, Brett C; Smolen, Andrew; Gold, Mark S

    The Brain Reward Cascade (BRC) is an interaction of neurotransmitters and their respective genes to control the amount of dopamine released within the brain. Any variations within this pathway, whether genetic or environmental (epigenetic), may result in addictive behaviors or RDS, which was coined to define addictive behaviors and their genetic components. To carry out this review we searched a number of important databases including: Filtered: Cochrane Systematic reviews; DARE; Pubmed Central Clinical Quaries; National Guideline Clearinghouse and unfiltered resources: PsychINFO; ACP PIER; PsychSage; Pubmed/Medline. The major search terms included: dopamine agonist therapy for Addiction; dopamine agonist therapy for Reward dependence; dopamine antagonistic therapy for addiction; dopamine antagonistic therapy for reward dependence and neurogenetics of RDS. While there are many studies claiming a genetic association with RDS behavior, not all are scientifically accurate. Albeit our bias, this Clinical Pearl discusses the facts and fictions behind molecular genetic testing in RDS and the significance behind the development of the Genetic Addiction Risk Score (GARS PREDX ™), the first test to accurately predict one's genetic risk for RDS.

  1. RESPIRATORY INFECTIONS RESEARCH IN AFGHANISTAN: BIBLIOMETRIC ANALYSIS WITH THE DATABASE PUBMED.

    PubMed

    Pilsczek, Florian H

    2015-01-01

    Infectious diseases research in a low-income country like Afghanistan is important. In this study an internet-based database Pubmed was used for bibliometric analysis of infectious diseases research activity. Research publications entries in PubMed were analysed according to number of publications, topic, publication type, and country of investigators. Between 2002-2011, 226 (77.7%) publications with the following research topics were identified: respiratory infections 3 (1.3%); parasites 8 (3.5%); diarrhoea 10 (4.4%); tuberculosis 10 (4.4%); human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) 11 (4.9%); multi-drug resistant bacteria (MDR) 18 (8.0%); polio 31 (13.7%); leishmania 31 (13.7%); malaria 46 (20.4%). From 2002-2011, 11 (4.9%) publications were basic science laboratory-based research studies. Between 2002-2011, 8 (3.5%) publications from Afghan institutions were identified. In conclusion, the internet-based database Pubmed can be consulted to collect data for guidance of infectious diseases research activity of low-income countries. The presented data suggest that infectious diseases research in Afghanistan is limited for respiratory infections research, has few studies conducted by Afghan institutions, and limited laboratory-based research contributions.

  2. MedlinePlus Connect: Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

    MedlinePlus

    ... topic data in XML format. Using the Web service, software developers can build applications that utilize MedlinePlus health topic information. The service accepts keyword searches as requests and returns relevant ...

  3. GO2PUB: Querying PubMed with semantic expansion of gene ontology terms

    PubMed Central

    2012-01-01

    Background With the development of high throughput methods of gene analyses, there is a growing need for mining tools to retrieve relevant articles in PubMed. As PubMed grows, literature searches become more complex and time-consuming. Automated search tools with good precision and recall are necessary. We developed GO2PUB to automatically enrich PubMed queries with gene names, symbols and synonyms annotated by a GO term of interest or one of its descendants. Results GO2PUB enriches PubMed queries based on selected GO terms and keywords. It processes the result and displays the PMID, title, authors, abstract and bibliographic references of the articles. Gene names, symbols and synonyms that have been generated as extra keywords from the GO terms are also highlighted. GO2PUB is based on a semantic expansion of PubMed queries using the semantic inheritance between terms through the GO graph. Two experts manually assessed the relevance of GO2PUB, GoPubMed and PubMed on three queries about lipid metabolism. Experts’ agreement was high (kappa = 0.88). GO2PUB returned 69% of the relevant articles, GoPubMed: 40% and PubMed: 29%. GO2PUB and GoPubMed have 17% of their results in common, corresponding to 24% of the total number of relevant results. 70% of the articles returned by more than one tool were relevant. 36% of the relevant articles were returned only by GO2PUB, 17% only by GoPubMed and 14% only by PubMed. For determining whether these results can be generalized, we generated twenty queries based on random GO terms with a granularity similar to those of the first three queries and compared the proportions of GO2PUB and GoPubMed results. These were respectively of 77% and 40% for the first queries, and of 70% and 38% for the random queries. The two experts also assessed the relevance of seven of the twenty queries (the three related to lipid metabolism and four related to other domains). Expert agreement was high (0.93 and 0.8). GO2PUB and GoPubMed performances

  4. Leaving the Lecture Behind: Putting PubMed Instruction into the Hands of the Students.

    PubMed

    Turner, Rose L; M Ketchum, Andrea; Ratajeski, Melissa A; Wessel, Charles B

    2017-01-01

    This column describes the development of a one-shot PubMed instruction class for medical students at a health sciences library. Background information on the objective is presented and discussed in the context of educational practice literature. The new course design centers on a guided group method of instruction in order to integrate more active learning. Surveyed students reported that the method was an effective way to learn how to search PubMed and that they preferred it to a traditional lecture. Pros and cons of the method are offered for other health sciences libraries interested in presenting PubMed instruction in a similar manner.

  5. Baby Health Checkup: MedlinePlus Health Topic

    MedlinePlus

    ... Articles References and abstracts from MEDLINE/PubMed (National Library of Medicine) Article: Post-discharge body weight and neurodevelopmental outcomes among very low birth... ... (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development) ...

  6. TwiMed: Twitter and PubMed Comparable Corpus of Drugs, Diseases, Symptoms, and Their Relations.

    PubMed

    Alvaro, Nestor; Miyao, Yusuke; Collier, Nigel

    2017-05-03

    Work on pharmacovigilance systems using texts from PubMed and Twitter typically target at different elements and use different annotation guidelines resulting in a scenario where there is no comparable set of documents from both Twitter and PubMed annotated in the same manner. This study aimed to provide a comparable corpus of texts from PubMed and Twitter that can be used to study drug reports from these two sources of information, allowing researchers in the area of pharmacovigilance using natural language processing (NLP) to perform experiments to better understand the similarities and differences between drug reports in Twitter and PubMed. We produced a corpus comprising 1000 tweets and 1000 PubMed sentences selected using the same strategy and annotated at entity level by the same experts (pharmacists) using the same set of guidelines. The resulting corpus, annotated by two pharmacists, comprises semantically correct annotations for a set of drugs, diseases, and symptoms. This corpus contains the annotations for 3144 entities, 2749 relations, and 5003 attributes. We present a corpus that is unique in its characteristics as this is the first corpus for pharmacovigilance curated from Twitter messages and PubMed sentences using the same data selection and annotation strategies. We believe this corpus will be of particular interest for researchers willing to compare results from pharmacovigilance systems (eg, classifiers and named entity recognition systems) when using data from Twitter and from PubMed. We hope that given the comprehensive set of drug names and the annotated entities and relations, this corpus becomes a standard resource to compare results from different pharmacovigilance studies in the area of NLP. ©Nestor Alvaro, Yusuke Miyao, Nigel Collier. Originally published in JMIR Public Health and Surveillance (http://publichealth.jmir.org), 03.05.2017.

  7. Publications on dementia in Medline 1974-2009: a quantitative bibliometric study.

    PubMed

    Theander, Sten S; Gustafson, Lars

    2013-05-01

    The aim is to describe the development of the scientific literature on dementia. We present a quantitative, bibliometric study of the literature on dementia, based on Medline, covering 36 years (1974-2009). Two samples of references to dementia papers were retrieved: The main sample based on the MeSH term Dementia holds more than 88,500 references. We have compared the annual additions of references on dementia with the addition to total Medline. Changes of 'the Dementia to Medline ratio' (%) give the best information on the development. Publications on dementia increased 5.6 times faster than Medline. Most of this relative acceleration took place during 1980-1997, when the references on dementia increased from 0.17 to 0.78%. During the recent 12 years, the publications on dementia have been keeping pace with Medline and have stabilized around 0.8%. We have shown a large increase of the literature on dementia, relative both to the development of all medical research and to all psychiatric research. The bibliometric approach may be questioned as quantitative methods treat articles as being of equal value, what is not true. If, for example, during a certain period, the research output is 'inflated' by a great number of repetitive papers, the quantitative method will give an unfair picture of the development. Our relative method, however, will give relevant results as, at each point of time, the proportion of 'valuable research' ought to be about the same in the dementia group as in total Medline. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  8. Biotea: semantics for Pubmed Central.

    PubMed

    Garcia, Alexander; Lopez, Federico; Garcia, Leyla; Giraldo, Olga; Bucheli, Victor; Dumontier, Michel

    2018-01-01

    A significant portion of biomedical literature is represented in a manner that makes it difficult for consumers to find or aggregate content through a computational query. One approach to facilitate reuse of the scientific literature is to structure this information as linked data using standardized web technologies. In this paper we present the second version of Biotea, a semantic, linked data version of the open-access subset of PubMed Central that has been enhanced with specialized annotation pipelines that uses existing infrastructure from the National Center for Biomedical Ontology. We expose our models, services, software and datasets. Our infrastructure enables manual and semi-automatic annotation, resulting data are represented as RDF-based linked data and can be readily queried using the SPARQL query language. We illustrate the utility of our system with several use cases. Our datasets, methods and techniques are available at http://biotea.github.io.

  9. Prophylactic antibiotics for preventing early Gram-positive central venous catheter infections in oncology patients, a Cochrane systematic review.

    PubMed

    van de Wetering, M D; van Woensel, J B M; Kremer, L C M; Caron, H N

    2005-05-01

    Long-term tunnelled central venous catheters (TCVC) are increasingly used in oncology patients. Infections are a frequent complication of TCVC, mostly caused by Gram-positive bacteria. The objective of this review is to evaluate the efficacy of antibiotics in the prevention of early Gram-positive TCVC infections, in oncology patients. We searched MEDLINE, EMBASE, and the Cochrane Controlled Trials Register up to July 2003. We selected randomised controlled trials (RCT) evaluating prophylactic antibiotics prior to insertion of the TCVC, and the combination of an antibiotic and heparin to flush the TCVC, in paediatric and adult oncology patients. The primary outcome was documented Gram-positive bacteraemia in patients with a TCVC. All trials identified were assessed and the data extracted independently by two reviewers. There were nine trials included. Four trials reported on vancomycin/teicoplanin prior to insertion of the TCVC compared to no antibiotics. There was no reduction in the number of Gram-positive TCVC infections with an Odds ratio of 0.42 (95% confidence interval 0.13-1.31). Five trials studied flushing of the TCVC with a vancomycin/heparin solution compared to heparin flushing only. This method decreased the number of TCVC infections significantly with an Odds ratio of 0.43 (95% CI 0.21-0.87). Flushing the TCVC with a vancomycin/heparin solution reduced the incidence of Gram-positive infections.

  10. Limitations in conduct and reporting of cochrane reviews rarely inhibit the determination of the validity of evidence for clinical decision-making.

    PubMed

    Alper, Brian S; Fedorowicz, Zbys; van Zuuren, Esther J

    2015-08-01

    To determine how often clinical conclusions derived from Cochrane Reviews have uncertain validity due to review conduct and reporting deficiencies. We evaluated 5142 clinical conclusions in DynaMed (an evidence-based point-of-care clinical reference) based on 4743 Cochrane Reviews. Clinical conclusions with level 2 evidence due to shortcomings in the review's conduct or reporting (rather than deficiencies in the underlying evidence) were confirmed by a DynaMed editor and two Cochrane Review authors. Thirty-one Cochrane Reviews (0.65%) had confirmed deficiencies in conduct and reporting as the reason for classifying 37 assessed clinical conclusions (0.72%) as level 2 evidence. In all cases, it was not feasible for the assessors to specify a clear criticism of the studies included in the reviews. The deficiencies were specific to not accounting for dropouts (2) or inadequate assessment and reporting of allocation concealment (11), other specific trial quality criteria (14), or all trial quality criteria (4). Cochrane Reviews provide high-quality assessment and synthesis of evidence, with fewer than 1% of Cochrane Reviews having limitations which hinder the summary of best current evidence for clinical decision-making. We expect this will further decrease following recent Cochrane quality initiatives. © 2015 Chinese Cochrane Center, West China Hospital of Sichuan University and Wiley Publishing Asia Pty Ltd.

  11. Demystifying the Search Button

    PubMed Central

    McKeever, Liam; Nguyen, Van; Peterson, Sarah J.; Gomez-Perez, Sandra

    2015-01-01

    A thorough review of the literature is the basis of all research and evidence-based practice. A gold-standard efficient and exhaustive search strategy is needed to ensure all relevant citations have been captured and that the search performed is reproducible. The PubMed database comprises both the MEDLINE and non-MEDLINE databases. MEDLINE-based search strategies are robust but capture only 89% of the total available citations in PubMed. The remaining 11% include the most recent and possibly relevant citations but are only searchable through less efficient techniques. An effective search strategy must employ both the MEDLINE and the non-MEDLINE portion of PubMed to ensure all studies have been identified. The robust MEDLINE search strategies are used for the MEDLINE portion of the search. Usage of the less robust strategies is then efficiently confined to search only the remaining 11% of PubMed citations that have not been indexed for MEDLINE. The current article offers step-by-step instructions for building such a search exploring methods for the discovery of medical subject heading (MeSH) terms to search MEDLINE, text-based methods for exploring the non-MEDLINE database, information on the limitations of convenience algorithms such as the “related citations feature,” the strengths and pitfalls associated with commonly used filters, the proper usage of Boolean operators to organize a master search strategy, and instructions for automating that search through “MyNCBI” to receive search query updates by email as new citations become available. PMID:26129895

  12. Impact of PubMed search filters on the retrieval of evidence by physicians.

    PubMed

    Shariff, Salimah Z; Sontrop, Jessica M; Haynes, R Brian; Iansavichus, Arthur V; McKibbon, K Ann; Wilczynski, Nancy L; Weir, Matthew A; Speechley, Mark R; Thind, Amardeep; Garg, Amit X

    2012-02-21

    Physicians face challenges when searching PubMed for research evidence, and they may miss relevant articles while retrieving too many nonrelevant articles. We investigated whether the use of search filters in PubMed improves searching by physicians. We asked a random sample of Canadian nephrologists to answer unique clinical questions derived from 100 systematic reviews of renal therapy. Physicians provided the search terms that they would type into PubMed to locate articles to answer these questions. We entered the physician-provided search terms into PubMed and applied two types of search filters alone or in combination: a methods-based filter designed to identify high-quality studies about treatment (clinical queries "therapy") and a topic-based filter designed to identify studies with renal content. We evaluated the comprehensiveness (proportion of relevant articles found) and efficiency (ratio of relevant to nonrelevant articles) of the filtered and nonfiltered searches. Primary studies included in the systematic reviews served as the reference standard for relevant articles. The average physician-provided search terms retrieved 46% of the relevant articles, while 6% of the retrieved articles were relevant (corrected) (the ratio of relevant to nonrelevant articles was 1:16). The use of both filters together produced a marked improvement in efficiency, resulting in a ratio of relevant to nonrelevant articles of 1:5 (16 percentage point improvement; 99% confidence interval 9% to 22%; p < 0.003) with no substantive change in comprehensiveness (44% of relevant articles found; p = 0.55). The use of PubMed search filters improves the efficiency of physician searches. Improved search performance may enhance the transfer of research into practice and improve patient care.

  13. [A list and analysis of reproductive medicine periodicals indexed in MEDLINE in 2006].

    PubMed

    Xia, Xin-yi; Huang, Yu-feng; Pan, Lian-jun; Shang, Xue-jun

    2006-07-01

    MEDLINE established by National Library of Medicine (NLM), USA, is the most commonly used biomedical literature retrieval system, whose indexed literature generally represents the top of the medical world. Of the total number of 4959 journals listed in the Lists of Journals Indexed in MEDLINE (2006) published by NLM, 46 are periodicals of reproductive medicine, mainly including andrology, fertility, and sterility. Researchers of reproductive medicine should be familiar with the journals indexed in MEDLINE, closely follow their published frontier researches in this field, and consciously contribute to them in English. Editors of reproductive medicine journals should endeavour to have their journals included in such internationally authoritative systems as MEDLINE, SCI, etc by publishing them in English in compliance with international standards. This article presents a list of the reproductive medicine periodicals indexed in MEDLINE (2006) together with a brief analysis, which is meant to help researchers in reproductive medicine, andrology and other relevant fields with their contribution, subscription, reading and retrieving, as well as to share some more knowledge about MEDLINE and its indexed journals with Chinese editors of reproductive medicine journals.

  14. PubMed Central Canada: Beyond an Open Access Repository?

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Nariani, Rajiv

    2013-01-01

    PubMed Central Canada (PMC Canada) represents a partnership between the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the National Research Council's Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (NRC-CISTI), and the National Library of Medicine of the US. The present study was done to gauge faculty awareness about the CIHR Policy on…

  15. Ontology-Driven Search and Triage: Design of a Web-Based Visual Interface for MEDLINE.

    PubMed

    Demelo, Jonathan; Parsons, Paul; Sedig, Kamran

    2017-02-02

    Diverse users need to search health and medical literature to satisfy open-ended goals such as making evidence-based decisions and updating their knowledge. However, doing so is challenging due to at least two major difficulties: (1) articulating information needs using accurate vocabulary and (2) dealing with large document sets returned from searches. Common search interfaces such as PubMed do not provide adequate support for exploratory search tasks. Our objective was to improve support for exploratory search tasks by combining two strategies in the design of an interactive visual interface by (1) using a formal ontology to help users build domain-specific knowledge and vocabulary and (2) providing multi-stage triaging support to help mitigate the information overload problem. We developed a Web-based tool, Ontology-Driven Visual Search and Triage Interface for MEDLINE (OVERT-MED), to test our design ideas. We implemented a custom searchable index of MEDLINE, which comprises approximately 25 million document citations. We chose a popular biomedical ontology, the Human Phenotype Ontology (HPO), to test our solution to the vocabulary problem. We implemented multistage triaging support in OVERT-MED, with the aid of interactive visualization techniques, to help users deal with large document sets returned from searches. Formative evaluation suggests that the design features in OVERT-MED are helpful in addressing the two major difficulties described above. Using a formal ontology seems to help users articulate their information needs with more accurate vocabulary. In addition, multistage triaging combined with interactive visualizations shows promise in mitigating the information overload problem. Our strategies appear to be valuable in addressing the two major problems in exploratory search. Although we tested OVERT-MED with a particular ontology and document collection, we anticipate that our strategies can be transferred successfully to other contexts.

  16. Risk factors for bladder cancer: challenges of conducting a literature search using PubMed.

    PubMed

    Joshi, Ashish; Preslan, Elicia

    2011-04-01

    The objective of this study was to assess the risk factors for bladder cancer using PubMed articles from January 2000 to December 2009. The study also aimed to describe the challenges encountered in the methodology of a literature search for bladder cancer risk factors using PubMed. Twenty-six categories of risk factors for bladder cancer were identified using the National Cancer Institute Web site and the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) Web site. A total of 1,338 PubMed searches were run using the term "urinary bladder cancer" and a risk factor term (e.g., "cigarette smoking") and were screened to identify 260 articles for final analysis. The search strategy had an overall precision of 3.42 percent, relative recall of 12.64 percent, and an F-measure of 5.39 percent. Although search terms derived from MeSH had the highest overall precision and recall, the differences did not reach significance, which indicates that for generalized, free-text searches of the PubMed database, the searchers' own terms are generally as effective as MeSH terms.

  17. What time-lag for a retraction search on PubMed?

    PubMed

    Decullier, Evelyne; Huot, Laure; Maisonneuve, Hervé

    2014-06-25

    To investigate fraud and errors, scientists have studied cohorts of retraction notices. These researches have been performed using a PubMed search on publication type "retraction of publication" which retrieves the notices of the retractions. We assessed the stability of the indexation of retraction notices over a 15-month period and what was the time-lag to get stability. A search on notices of retraction issued in 2008 was repeated every 3 months during 15 months from February 2011. The first search resulted in 237 notices of retraction. Throughout the study period, 14 discrepancies with the initial search were observed (6%). We found that the number of retraction notices became stable 35 months after the retraction. The time-lag observed in this study has to be taken into account when performing a PubMed search.

  18. A MedlinePlus® Kiosk Promoting Health Literacy

    PubMed Central

    TEOLIS, MARILYN G.

    2010-01-01

    As an ongoing community outreach project, a pictorial touch-screen kiosk and Web site was developed for 48 MedlinePlus® tutorials. This learning experience serves Davidson County, Tennessee’s uninsured patients at the University of Tennessee/Baptist Hospital’s Internal Medicine Clinic. The availability of a health information kiosk at the University of Tennessee/Baptist Hospital primary care clinic significantly increases health literacy for patients by providing reliable, physician-recommended information in an appropriate format—information these patients did not previously find readily available. Participants report they have a greater understanding of their health issues, and the project is introducing hundreds of patients to MedlinePlus. PMID:20808715

  19. A bottom-up approach to MEDLINE indexing recommendations.

    PubMed

    Jimeno-Yepes, Antonio; Wilkowski, Bartłomiej; Mork, James G; Van Lenten, Elizabeth; Fushman, Dina Demner; Aronson, Alan R

    2011-01-01

    MEDLINE indexing performed by the US National Library of Medicine staff describes the essence of a biomedical publication in about 14 Medical Subject Headings (MeSH). Since 2002, this task is assisted by the Medical Text Indexer (MTI) program. We present a bottom-up approach to MEDLINE indexing in which the abstract is searched for indicators for a specific MeSH recommendation in a two-step process. Supervised machine learning combined with triage rules improves sensitivity of recommendations while keeping the number of recommended terms relatively small. Improvement in recommendations observed in this work warrants further exploration of this approach to MTI recommendations on a larger set of MeSH headings.

  20. Potential and Limitations of Cochrane Reviews in Pediatric Cardiology: A Systematic Analysis.

    PubMed

    Poryo, Martin; Khosrawikatoli, Sara; Abdul-Khaliq, Hashim; Meyer, Sascha

    2017-04-01

    Evidence-based medicine has contributed substantially to the quality of medical care in pediatric and adult cardiology. However, our impression from the bedside is that a substantial number of Cochrane reviews generate inconclusive data that are of limited clinical benefit. We performed a systematic synopsis of Cochrane reviews published between 2001 and 2015 in the field of pediatric cardiology. Main outcome parameters were the number and percentage of conclusive, partly conclusive, and inconclusive reviews as well as their recommendations and their development over three a priori defined intervals. In total, 69 reviews were analyzed. Most of them examined preterm and term neonates (36.2%), whereas 33.3% included also non-pediatric patients. Leading topics were pharmacological issues (71.0%) followed by interventional (10.1%) and operative procedures (2.9%). The majority of reviews were inconclusive (42.9%), while 36.2% were conclusive and 21.7% partly conclusive. Although the number of published reviews increased during the three a priori defined time intervals, reviews with "no specific recommendations" remained stable while "recommendations in favor of an intervention" clearly increased. Main reasons for missing recommendations were insufficient data (n = 41) as well as an insufficient number of trials (n = 22) or poor study quality (n = 19). There is still need for high-quality research, which will likely yield a greater number of Cochrane reviews with conclusive results.

  1. Factors related to the association of social anxiety disorder and alcohol use among adolescents: a systematic review.

    PubMed

    Cruz, Elisabeth Lima Dias da; Martins, Priscila Diniz de Carvalho; Diniz, Paula Rejane Beserra

    To identify the risk factors related to the association between social anxiety disorder and alcohol use in adolescents. The PICO research strategy was used to perform a systematic review in Medline, LILACS, Pubmed, IBECS and Cochrane Library databases. DeCS/MeSH: Phobic Disorders, Adolescent, Behavior, Ethanol, Risk Factors, and the Boolean operator "AND" were used. Inclusion criteria were: cross-sectional, prospective/retrospective cohort, and case-control studies, carried out in adolescents (10-19 years), original articles on social anxiety disorder and alcohol use published between 2010 and 2015. Studies that did not report the terms "anxiety disorder" and "alcohol use" in the title and abstract were excluded. 409 articles were retrieved; after the exclusion of 277 repeated articles, the following were eligible: 94 in MEDLINE, 68 in Pubmed, 12 in IBCS, and three in LILACS. Titles and abstracts were independently read by two examiners, which resulted in the selection of eight articles for the analysis. Risk factors associated to the two disorders were female gender, age, peer approval and affective problems for alcohol use, confrontation situations and/or compliance reasons, frequency of alcohol use, and secondary comorbidities, such as depression and generalized anxiety. It is necessary to assess the period of social anxiety disorders first symptom onset, as well as the risks for alcohol use in order to establish corrective intervention guidelines, especially for socially anxious students. Copyright © 2017. Published by Elsevier Editora Ltda.

  2. Using indirect comparisons to compare interventions within a Cochrane review: a tool for comparative effectiveness research.

    PubMed

    Agapova, Maria; Devine, Emily B; Nguyen, Hiep; Wolf, Fredric M; Inoue, Lurdes Y T

    2014-07-01

    Assessing relative performance among competing interventions is an important part of comparative effectiveness research. Bayesian indirect comparisons add information to existing Cochrane reviews, such as which intervention is likely to perform best. However, heterogeneity variance priors may influence results and, potentially, clinical guidance. We highlight the features of Bayesian indirect comparisons using a case study of a Cochrane review update in asthma care. The probability that one self-management educational intervention outperforms others is estimated. Simulation studies investigate the effect of heterogeneity variance prior distributions. Results suggest a 55% probability that individual education is best, followed by combination (39%) and group (6%). The intervention with few trials was sensitive to prior distributions. Bayesian indirect comparisons updates of Cochrane reviews are valuable comparative effectiveness research tools.

  3. Treating Cataracts | NIH MedlinePlus the Magazine

    MedlinePlus

    ... Claudine Klose, 63, lives on a farm in New York's Hudson Valley. She had successful cataract surgery in 2013 and shared her experience recently with NIH MedlinePlus magazine. What did you notice about your vision that ...

  4. Keys to Recovery after Knee Replacement Surgery | NIH MedlinePlus the Magazine

    MedlinePlus

    Skip to main content NIH MedlinePlus the Magazine NIH MedlinePlus Salud Download the Current Issue PDF [1.5 mb] Trusted Health Information from the National Institutes of Health Home Current Issue ...

  5. Solving the Undiagnosed Disease Puzzle at NIH | NIH MedlinePlus the Magazine

    MedlinePlus

    Skip to main content NIH MedlinePlus the Magazine NIH MedlinePlus Salud Download the Current Issue PDF [2.68 mb] Trusted Health Information from the National Institutes of Health Home Current Issue ...

  6. Conclusiveness of the Cochrane reviews in gynaecological cancer: A systematic analysis.

    PubMed

    Yin, Shande; Chuai, Yunhai; Wang, Aiming; Zhang, Lanmei

    2015-06-01

    To assess the conclusiveness of Cochrane reviews in the field of gynaecological cancer. The Cochrane Library was searched for reviews regarding gynaecological cancer published between 1 January 2000 and 1 November 2014. Data were extracted from each paper and the conclusiveness of each review was assessed. The study included 66 reviews, 41 (62.1%) of which were conclusive. Of these, 58 included randomized controlled trials (RCTs), 37 (63.8%) of which were conclusive. Conclusive reviews of RCTs included significantly more patients than inconclusive reviews, but there was no difference in the number of included studies. Of the eight reviews of nonrandomized studies, four (50.0%) were conclusive. The majority of reviews recognized the need for additional studies. In the field of gynaecological cancer, reviews are more likely to be conclusive when they include RCTs, as well as large numbers of patients. © The Author(s) 2015 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav.

  7. Treatment algorithm for anal fissure. Consensus document of the Spanish Association of Coloproctology and the Coloproctology Division of the Spanish Association of Surgeons.

    PubMed

    Arroyo, Antonio; Montes, Elisa; Calderón, Teresa; Blesa, Isabel; Elía, Manuela; Salgado, Gervasio; García-Armengol, Juan; de-la-Portilla, Fernando

    2018-03-08

    The Spanish Association of Coloproctology and the Coloproctology Division of the Spanish Association of Surgeons propose this consensus document with a treatment algorithm for anal fissure that could be used for decision making. Non-surgical therapy and surgical treatment of anal fissure are explained, and the recommended algorithm is provided. The methodology used was: creation of a group of experts; search in PubMed, MEDLINE and the Cochrane Library for publications from the last 10 years about anal fissure; presentation at the 21st National Meeting of the Spanish Association of Coloproctology Foundation 2017 with voting for/against each conclusion by the attendees and review by the scientific committee of the Spanish Association of Coloproctology. Copyright © 2018 AEC. Publicado por Elsevier España, S.L.U. All rights reserved.

  8. No. 263-Maternity Leave in Normal Pregnancy.

    PubMed

    Leduc, Dean

    2017-10-01

    To assist maternity care providers in recognizing and discussing health- and illness-related issues in pregnancy and their relationship to maternity benefits. Published literature was retrieved through searches of PubMed or Medline, CINAHL, and The Cochrane Library in 2009 using appropriate controlled vocabulary (e.g., maternity benefits) and key words (e.g., maternity, benefits, pregnancy). Results were restricted to systematic reviews, randomized controlled trials/controlled clinical trials, and observational studies. There were no date or language restrictions. Searches were updated on a regular basis and incorporated in the guideline to December 2009. Grey (unpublished) literature was identified through searching the web sites of health technology assessment and health technology assessment-related agencies, clinical practice guideline collections, clinical trial registries, and national and international medical specialty societies. Copyright © 2017. Published by Elsevier Inc.

  9. Association between central auditory processing mechanism and cardiac autonomic regulation

    PubMed Central

    2014-01-01

    Background This study was conducted to describe the association between central auditory processing mechanism and the cardiac autonomic regulation. Methods It was researched papers on the topic addressed in this study considering the following data bases: Medline, Pubmed, Lilacs, Scopus and Cochrane. The key words were: “auditory stimulation, heart rate, autonomic nervous system and P300”. Results The findings in the literature demonstrated that auditory stimulation influences the autonomic nervous system and has been used in conjunction with other methods. It is considered a promising step in the investigation of therapeutic procedures for rehabilitation and quality of life of several pathologies. Conclusion The association between auditory stimulation and the level of the cardiac autonomic nervous system has received significant contributions in relation to musical stimuli. PMID:24834128

  10. Eradication of tetanus.

    PubMed

    Thwaites, C L; Loan, H T

    2015-01-01

    The causative agent of tetanus, Clostridium tetani is widespread in the environment throughout the world and cannot be eradicated. To reduce the number of cases of tetanus efforts are focussed on prevention using vaccination and post-exposure wound care. Medline, Pubmed and Cochrane databases; World Health Organization and United Nations Children's Fund publications. The maternal and neonatal tetanus elimination initiative has resulted in significant reductions in mortality from neonatal tetanus throughout the world. Although there are few data available it is likely that large numbers of children and adults, particularly men, remain unprotected due to lack of booster immunization. It remains unclear how HIV and malaria affect both responses to vaccination and transplacental transfer of antibodies or how this might affect timing of vaccination doses. © The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press.

  11. Examining the relationship between infectious diseases and flooding in Europe

    PubMed Central

    Brown, Lisa; Murray, Virginia

    2013-01-01

    Introduction Many infectious diseases are sensitive to climatic changes; specifically, flooding. This systematic literature review aimed to strengthen the quality and completeness of evidence on infectious diseases following flooding, relevant to Europe. Methods A systematic literature review from 2004–2012 was performed. Focused searches of the following databases were conducted: Medline, Scopus, PubMed, Cochrane Library, and Evidence Aid. Personal communications with key informants were also reviewed. Results Thirty-eight studies met the inclusion criteria. Evidence suggested that water-borne, rodent-borne, and vector-borne diseases have been associated with flooding in Europe, although at a lower incidence than developing countries. Conclusion Disease surveillance and early warning systems, coupled with effective prevention and response capabilities, can reduce current and future vulnerability to infectious diseases following flooding. PMID:28228994

  12. Treatment of vascular dementia. Recommendations of the Scientific Department of Cognitive Neurology and Aging of the Brazilian Academy of Neurology

    PubMed Central

    Brucki, Sonia Maria Dozzi; Ferraz, Ana Cláudia; de Freitas, Gabriel R.; Massaro, Ayrton Roberto; Radanovic, Márcia; Schultz, Rodrigo Rizek

    2011-01-01

    Scientific Department of Cognitive Neurology and Aging of ABN had a consensus meeting to write recommendations on treatment of vascular dementia, there was no previous issue. This disease has numerous particularities and can be considered a preventable dementia. Prevention treatment is primary care of vascular risk factors or a secondary prevention of factors that could cause recurrence of ischemic or hemorrhagic brain modifications. In these guidelines we suggested only symptomatic treatment, pharmacologic or non-pharmacologic. We have reviewed current publications on MEDLINE (PubMed), LILACS e Cochrane Library databases. Recommendations are concern to the following factors and their prevention evidences, association, or treatment of vascular dementia: physical activity, tobacco use, diet and food supplements, arterial hypertension, diabetes mellitus, obesity, statins, cardiac failure, atrial fibrillation, antithrombotics, sleep apnea, carotid revascularization, symptomatic pharmacological treatment. PMID:29213754

  13. Chinese literatures of radiation oncology covered by PubMed over the past five years.

    PubMed

    Niu, Dao-Li; Zhen, Jun-Jie; He, Fen

    2010-04-01

    PubMed is generally acknowledged for its scientificity in literature coverage and authority of literature retrieval . In recent years, many studies have been published in China about radiation oncology. We aimed to investigate the literatures about radiation oncology in China covered by PubMed over the past five years. We collected primary data by searching the PubMed database using the related subject words. The collected data were analyzed and evaluated by bibliometric methods. In the past five years, 550 articles by Chinese authors related to radiotherapy were indexed in PubMed. These articles were published in 160 journals among 26 Chinese provinces/cities. These articles mainly focused on radiation dose and computer-aided radiation therapy. Sixty-four articles were published by Chinese Journal of Cancer , which ranked the top. Forty-four articles were published by the International Journal of Radiation Oncology Biology Physics (IF=4.29), with the largest number among SCI journals. One hundred and sixteen articles from Guangdong Province were covered, accounting for 21.09%. Over the past five years, the discipline of radiation oncology has been greatly developed. The literatures mainly focus on clinical radiation oncology and their regional distribution is uneven.

  14. Language and country preponderance trends in MEDLINE and its causes.

    PubMed

    Loria, Alvar; Arroyo, Pedro

    2005-07-01

    The authors characterized the output of MEDLINE papers by language and country of publication during a thirty-four-year time period. We classified MEDLINE's journal articles by country of publication (Anglos/Non-Anglos) and language (English/Non-English) for the years 1966 and from 1970 to 2000 at five-year intervals. Eight English-speaking countries were considered Anglos. Linear regression analysis of number of papers versus time was performed. The global number of papers increased linearly at a rate of 8,142 papers per year. Anglo and English papers also increased linearly (6,740 and 9,199, respectively). Journals of Non-Anglo countries accounted for 25% of the English language increase (2,438 per year). Only Non-English papers decreased at a rate of 1,056 fewer papers per year. These trends have led to overwhelming shares of English and Anglo papers in MEDLINE. In 2000, 68% of all papers were published in the 8 Anglo countries and 90% were written in English. The Anglo and English preponderances appear to be a consequence of at least two phenomena: (1) editorial policy changes in MEDLINE and in some journals from Non-Anglo countries and (2) factors affecting Non-Anglo researchers in the third world (publication constraints, migration, and undersupport). These are tentative conclusions that need confirmation.

  15. PubMed vs. HighWire Press: a head-to-head comparison of two medical literature search engines.

    PubMed

    Vanhecke, Thomas E; Barnes, Michael A; Zimmerman, Janet; Shoichet, Sandor

    2007-09-01

    PubMed and HighWire Press are both useful medical literature search engines available for free to anyone on the internet. We measured retrieval accuracy, number of results generated, retrieval speed, features and search tools on HighWire Press and PubMed using the quick search features of each. We found that using HighWire Press resulted in a higher likelihood of retrieving the desired article and higher number of search results than the same search on PubMed. PubMed was faster than HighWire Press in delivering search results regardless of search settings. There are considerable differences in search features between these two search engines.

  16. A nursing qualitative systematic review required MEDLINE and CINAHL for study identification.

    PubMed

    Subirana, Mireia; Solá, Ivan; Garcia, Josep M; Gich, Ignasi; Urrútia, Gerard

    2005-01-01

    Analyze the number and the relevance of references retrieved from CINAHL, MEDLINE, and EMBASE to perform a nursing systematic review. A search strategy for the review topic was designed according to thesaurus terms. The study analyzes (1) references with abstract, (2) overlap between databases, (3) reference relevance, (4) relevance agreement between experts, and (5) reference accessibility. Bibliographic search retrieved 232 references: 16% (37) in CINAHL, 68% (157) in MEDLINE, and 16% (38) in EMBASE. Of these, 72% (164) were references retrieved with an abstract: 14% (23) in CINAHL, 70% (115) in MEDLINE, and 16% (26) in EMBASE. Overlap was observed in 2% (5) of the references. Relevance assessment reduced the number of references to 43 (19%): 12 (34.3%) in CINAHL, 31 (19.7%) in MEDLINE, and none in EMBASE (Z=-1.97; P=.048). Agreement between experts achieved a maximum Cohen's kappa of 0.76 (P < .005). References identified in CINAHL were the most difficult to obtain (chi(2)=3.9; df=1; P=.048). To perform a quality bibliographic search for a systematic review on nursing topics, CINAHL and MEDLINE are essential databases for consultation to maximize the accuracy of the search.

  17. Cochrane Acute Respiratory Infections Group's Stakeholder Engagement Project identified systematic review priority areas.

    PubMed

    Scott, Anna Mae; Clark, Justin; Dooley, Liz; Jones, Ann; Jones, Mark; Del Mar, Chris

    2018-05-22

    Cochrane Acute Respiratory Infections (ARI) Group conducts systematic reviews of the evidence for treatment and prevention of ARIs. We report the results of a prioritisation project, aiming to identify highest priority systematic review topics. The project consisted of 2 Phases. Phase 1 analysed the gap between existing RCTs and Cochrane Systematic Reviews (reported previously). Phase 2 (reported here) consisted of a two-round survey. In round 1, respondents prioritised 68 topics and suggested up to 10 additional topics; in Round 2, respondents prioritised top 25 topics from Round 1. Respondents included clinicians, researchers, systematic reviewers, allied health, patients, and carers, from 33 different countries. In Round 1, 154 respondents identified 20 priority topics, most commonly selecting topics in non-specific ARIs, influenza, and common cold. 50 respondents also collectively suggested 134 additional topics. In Round 2, 78 respondents prioritised top 25 topics, most commonly in the areas of non-specific ARIs, pneumonia and influenza. We generated a list of priority systematic review topics, to guide the Cochrane ARI Group's systematic review work for the next 24 months. Stakeholder involvement enhanced the transparency of the process, and will increase the usability and relevance of the Group's work to stakeholders. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  18. MedlinePlus FAQ: Can I play videos on my phone or tablet?

    MedlinePlus

    ... MedlinePlus also links to video content on the Internet. Some videos might not play on your mobile device. Text alternatives are available for video content licensed by MedlinePlus: Access closed captioning for health videos with the CC ...

  19. Medical literature searches: a comparison of PubMed and Google Scholar.

    PubMed

    Nourbakhsh, Eva; Nugent, Rebecca; Wang, Helen; Cevik, Cihan; Nugent, Kenneth

    2012-09-01

    Medical literature searches provide critical information for clinicians. However, the best strategy for identifying relevant high-quality literature is unknown. We compared search results using PubMed and Google Scholar on four clinical questions and analysed these results with respect to article relevance and quality. Abstracts from the first 20 citations for each search were classified into three relevance categories. We used the weighted kappa statistic to analyse reviewer agreement and nonparametric rank tests to compare the number of citations for each article and the corresponding journals' impact factors. Reviewers ranked 67.6% of PubMed articles and 80% of Google Scholar articles as at least possibly relevant (P = 0.116) with high agreement (all kappa P-values < 0.01). Google Scholar articles had a higher median number of citations (34 vs. 1.5, P < 0.0001) and came from higher impact factor journals (5.17 vs. 3.55, P = 0.036). PubMed searches and Google Scholar searches often identify different articles. In this study, Google Scholar articles were more likely to be classified as relevant, had higher numbers of citations and were published in higher impact factor journals. The identification of frequently cited articles using Google Scholar for searches probably has value for initial literature searches. © 2012 The authors. Health Information and Libraries Journal © 2012 Health Libraries Group.

  20. Cochrane pregnancy and childbirth database: resource for evidence-based practice.

    PubMed

    Callister, L C; Hobbins-Garbett, D

    2000-01-01

    The Cochrane Pregnancy and Childbirth database is an ongoing meta-analysis of evidence documenting effective health care practices for childbearing women and their neonates. It is proving invaluable to nurse educators, researchers, clinicians, and administrators working in a variety of health care delivery settings. Evidence-based nursing practice that is safe and effective can enhance rather than overpower pivotal and celebratory life events such as childbirth.

  1. Discrepancies among Scopus, Web of Science, and PubMed coverage of funding information in medical journal articles.

    PubMed

    Kokol, Peter; Vošner, Helena Blažun

    2018-01-01

    The overall aim of the present study was to compare the coverage of existing research funding information for articles indexed in Scopus, Web of Science, and PubMed databases. The numbers of articles with funding information published in 2015 were identified in the three selected databases and compared using bibliometric analysis of a sample of twenty-eight prestigious medical journals. Frequency analysis of the number of articles with funding information showed statistically significant differences between Scopus, Web of Science, and PubMed databases. The largest proportion of articles with funding information was found in Web of Science (29.0%), followed by PubMed (14.6%) and Scopus (7.7%). The results show that coverage of funding information differs significantly among Scopus, Web of Science, and PubMed databases in a sample of the same medical journals. Moreover, we found that, currently, funding data in PubMed is more difficult to obtain and analyze compared with that in the other two databases.

  2. A search engine to access PubMed monolingual subsets: proof of concept and evaluation in French.

    PubMed

    Griffon, Nicolas; Schuers, Matthieu; Soualmia, Lina Fatima; Grosjean, Julien; Kerdelhué, Gaétan; Kergourlay, Ivan; Dahamna, Badisse; Darmoni, Stéfan Jacques

    2014-12-01

    PubMed contains numerous articles in languages other than English. However, existing solutions to access these articles in the language in which they were written remain unconvincing. The aim of this study was to propose a practical search engine, called Multilingual PubMed, which will permit access to a PubMed subset in 1 language and to evaluate the precision and coverage for the French version (Multilingual PubMed-French). To create this tool, translations of MeSH were enriched (eg, adding synonyms and translations in French) and integrated into a terminology portal. PubMed subsets in several European languages were also added to our database using a dedicated parser. The response time for the generic semantic search engine was evaluated for simple queries. BabelMeSH, Multilingual PubMed-French, and 3 different PubMed strategies were compared by searching for literature in French. Precision and coverage were measured for 20 randomly selected queries. The results were evaluated as relevant to title and abstract, the evaluator being blind to search strategy. More than 650,000 PubMed citations in French were integrated into the Multilingual PubMed-French information system. The response times were all below the threshold defined for usability (2 seconds). Two search strategies (Multilingual PubMed-French and 1 PubMed strategy) showed high precision (0.93 and 0.97, respectively), but coverage was 4 times higher for Multilingual PubMed-French. It is now possible to freely access biomedical literature using a practical search tool in French. This tool will be of particular interest for health professionals and other end users who do not read or query sufficiently in English. The information system is theoretically well suited to expand the approach to other European languages, such as German, Spanish, Norwegian, and Portuguese.

  3. A Search Engine to Access PubMed Monolingual Subsets: Proof of Concept and Evaluation in French

    PubMed Central

    Schuers, Matthieu; Soualmia, Lina Fatima; Grosjean, Julien; Kerdelhué, Gaétan; Kergourlay, Ivan; Dahamna, Badisse; Darmoni, Stéfan Jacques

    2014-01-01

    Background PubMed contains numerous articles in languages other than English. However, existing solutions to access these articles in the language in which they were written remain unconvincing. Objective The aim of this study was to propose a practical search engine, called Multilingual PubMed, which will permit access to a PubMed subset in 1 language and to evaluate the precision and coverage for the French version (Multilingual PubMed-French). Methods To create this tool, translations of MeSH were enriched (eg, adding synonyms and translations in French) and integrated into a terminology portal. PubMed subsets in several European languages were also added to our database using a dedicated parser. The response time for the generic semantic search engine was evaluated for simple queries. BabelMeSH, Multilingual PubMed-French, and 3 different PubMed strategies were compared by searching for literature in French. Precision and coverage were measured for 20 randomly selected queries. The results were evaluated as relevant to title and abstract, the evaluator being blind to search strategy. Results More than 650,000 PubMed citations in French were integrated into the Multilingual PubMed-French information system. The response times were all below the threshold defined for usability (2 seconds). Two search strategies (Multilingual PubMed-French and 1 PubMed strategy) showed high precision (0.93 and 0.97, respectively), but coverage was 4 times higher for Multilingual PubMed-French. Conclusions It is now possible to freely access biomedical literature using a practical search tool in French. This tool will be of particular interest for health professionals and other end users who do not read or query sufficiently in English. The information system is theoretically well suited to expand the approach to other European languages, such as German, Spanish, Norwegian, and Portuguese. PMID:25448528

  4. Characterization of the mechanism of drug-drug interactions from PubMed using MeSH terms.

    PubMed

    Lu, Yin; Figler, Bryan; Huang, Hong; Tu, Yi-Cheng; Wang, Ju; Cheng, Feng

    2017-01-01

    Identifying drug-drug interaction (DDI) is an important topic for the development of safe pharmaceutical drugs and for the optimization of multidrug regimens for complex diseases such as cancer and HIV. There have been about 150,000 publications on DDIs in PubMed, which is a great resource for DDI studies. In this paper, we introduced an automatic computational method for the systematic analysis of the mechanism of DDIs using MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) terms from PubMed literature. MeSH term is a controlled vocabulary thesaurus developed by the National Library of Medicine for indexing and annotating articles. Our method can effectively identify DDI-relevant MeSH terms such as drugs, proteins and phenomena with high accuracy. The connections among these MeSH terms were investigated by using co-occurrence heatmaps and social network analysis. Our approach can be used to visualize relationships of DDI terms, which has the potential to help users better understand DDIs. As the volume of PubMed records increases, our method for automatic analysis of DDIs from the PubMed database will become more accurate.

  5. Patient experiences with MedlinePlus.gov: a survey of internal medicine patients.

    PubMed

    Smalligan, Roger D; Campbell, Emily O; Ismail, Hassan M

    2008-12-01

    In 2004, the American College of Physicians joined with the National Library of Medicine in an effort to help patients find reliable health information free of commercial bias as the Web site MedlinePlus.gov. The aim of this study was to evaluate the usefulness of the MedlinePlus.gov site as perceived by patients who were referred to the site by their internist. A 27-item questionnaire developed by the American College of Physicians Foundation was distributed between january and May 2005 to a convenience sample of 893 adult patient volunteers attending 34 internal medicine practices across the United States. The questionnaire revealed that although most patients (55%) routinely look up medical information, only 43% had used MedlinePlus.gov. Of those who had used the site, 95% were satisfied with the information they found there, and 94% said the information they found at MedlinePlus.gov would help them make better health decisions. Patients who used the MedlinePlus.gov site at the recommendation of their physician found it to use, informative, and felt it would help them make better health decisions. Directing patients to this high quality, noncommercial, educational resource online may be an important adjunct to patient education efforts by physicians.

  6. Extracting noun phrases for all of MEDLINE.

    PubMed Central

    Bennett, N. A.; He, Q.; Powell, K.; Schatz, B. R.

    1999-01-01

    A natural language parser that could extract noun phrases for all medical texts would be of great utility in analyzing content for information retrieval. We discuss the extraction of noun phrases from MEDLINE, using a general parser not tuned specifically for any medical domain. The noun phrase extractor is made up of three modules: tokenization; part-of-speech tagging; noun phrase identification. Using our program, we extracted noun phrases from the entire MEDLINE collection, encompassing 9.3 million abstracts. Over 270 million noun phrases were generated, of which 45 million were unique. The quality of these phrases was evaluated by examining all phrases from a sample collection of abstracts. The precision and recall of the phrases from our general parser compared favorably with those from three other parsers we had previously evaluated. We are continuing to improve our parser and evaluate our claim that a generic parser can effectively extract all the different phrases across the entire medical literature. PMID:10566444

  7. Time to Update and Quantitative Changes in the Results of Cochrane Pregnancy and Childbirth Reviews

    PubMed Central

    Jaidee, Wanlop; Moher, David; Laopaiboon, Malinee

    2010-01-01

    Background The recommended interval between updates for systematic reviews included in The Cochrane Library is 2 years. However, it is unclear whether this interval is always appropriate. Whereas excessive updating wastes time and resources, insufficient updating allows out-of-date or incomplete evidence to guide clinical decision-making. We set out to determine, for Cochrane pregnancy and childbirth reviews, the frequency of updates, factors associated with updating, and whether updating frequency was appropriate. Methodology/Principal Findings Cochrane pregnancy and childbirth reviews published in Issue 3, 2007 of the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews were retrieved, and data were collected from their original and updated versions. Quantitative changes were determined for one of the primary outcomes (mortality, or the outcome of greatest clinical significance). Potential factors associated with time to update were assessed using the Cox proportional hazard model. Among the 101 reviews in our final sample, the median time before the first update was 3.3 years (95% CI 2.7–3.8). Only 32.7% had been updated within the recommended interval of 2 years. In 75.3% (76/101), a median of 3 new trials with a median of 576 additional participants were included in the updated versions. There were quantitative changes in 71% of the reviews that included new trials (54/76): the median change in effect size was 18.2%, and the median change in 95% CI width was 30.8%. Statistical significance changed in 18.5% (10/54) of these reviews, but conclusions were revised in only 3.7% (2/54). A shorter time to update was associated with the same original review team at updating. Conclusions/Significance Most reviews were updated less frequently than recommended by Cochrane policy, but few updates had revised conclusions. Prescribed time to update should be reconsidered to support improved decision-making while making efficient use of limited resources. PMID:20644625

  8. Washout policies in long-term indwelling urinary catheterization in adults: a short version cochrane review.

    PubMed

    Sinclair, Lesley; Hagen, Suzanne; Cross, Stephen

    2011-09-01

    People requiring long-term bladder draining with an indwelling catheter can experience catheter blockage. Regimens involving different solutions can be used to wash out catheters with the aim of preventing blockage. To determine if certain washout regimens (including no washout) are better than others in terms of effectiveness, acceptability, complications, quality of life, and economics for the management of long-term indwelling urinary catheters in adults. We searched the Cochrane Incontinence Group Specialized Trials Register (searched April 30, 2009), MEDLINE (January 1966 to April 2009), MEDLINE In-Process (April 30, 2009), EMBASE (January 1980 to April 2009), and CINAHL (December 1981 to April 2009). Additionally, we examined all reference lists of identified trials and contacted manufacturers and researchers in the field. All randomized and quasi-randomized trials comparing catheter washout policies (e.g., washout vs. no washout, different washout solutions, frequency, duration, volume, concentration, method of administration) in adults (16 years and above) in any setting (i.e., hospital, nursing/residential home, community) with an indwelling urethral or suprapubic catheter in place for more than 28 days. Data were extracted by three reviewers independently and compared. Disagreements were resolved by discussion. Data were processed as described in the Cochrane Handbook. If the trial data were not fully reported, clarification was sought from the authors. For categorical outcomes, the numbers reporting an outcome were related to the numbers at risk in each group to derive a risk ratio (RR). For continuous outcomes, means, and standard deviations were used to derive weighted mean differences (WMD). No meta-analysis of study results was possible. Five trials met the inclusion criteria involving 242 patients (132 completed) in two cross-over and three parallel-group randomized controlled trials. Only three of the eight comparisons pre-stated in the review

  9. Measuring Medical Student Preference: A Comparison of Classroom Versus Online Instruction for Teaching Pubmed*EC

    PubMed Central

    Schimming, Laura M.

    2008-01-01

    Objective: The research analyzed evaluation data to assess medical student satisfaction with the learning experience when required PubMed training is offered entirely online. Methods: A retrospective study analyzed skills assessment scores and student feedback forms from 455 first-year medical students who completed PubMed training either through classroom sessions or an online tutorial. The class of 2006 (n = 99) attended traditional librarian-led sessions in a computer classroom. The classes of 2007 (n = 120), 2008 (n = 121), and 2009 (n = 115) completed the training entirely online through a self-paced tutorial. PubMed skills assessment scores and student feedback about the training were compared for all groups. Results: As evidenced by open-ended comments about the training, students who took the online tutorial were equally or more satisfied with the learning experience than students who attended classroom sessions, with the classes of 2008 and 2009 reporting greater satisfaction (P<0.001) than the other 2 groups. The mean score on the PubMed skills assessment (91%) was the same for all groups of students. Conclusions: Student satisfaction improved and PubMed assessment scores did not change when instruction was offered online to first-year medical students. Comments from the students who received online training suggest that the increased control and individual engagement with the web-based content led to their satisfaction with the online tutorial. PMID:18654658

  10. Advance Care Plan: A Checklist for the Future | NIH MedlinePlus the Magazine

    MedlinePlus

    Skip to main content NIH MedlinePlus the Magazine NIH MedlinePlus Salud Download the Current Issue PDF [3.1 mb] Trusted Health Information from the National Institutes of Health Home Current Issue ...

  11. Joint Replacement Surgery: What you Need to Know | NIH MedlinePlus the Magazine

    MedlinePlus

    Skip to main content NIH MedlinePlus the Magazine NIH MedlinePlus Salud Download the Current Issue PDF [1.5 mb] Trusted Health Information from the National Institutes of Health Home Current Issue ...

  12. Review of the role of robotic surgery in male infertility.

    PubMed

    Etafy, Mohamed; Gudeloglu, Ahmet; Brahmbhatt, Jamin V; Parekattil, Sijo J

    2018-03-01

    To present the current state of the art in various robot-assisted microsurgical procedures in male infertility and review the latest literature, as the technology in infertility procedures has substantially developed since the incorporation of the Vinci® robotic platform (Intuitive Surgical, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, USA). The search strategy in this review was conducted in accordance with Cochrane guidelines and the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA). A search strategy was conducted in MEDLINE, PubMed and the Cochrane electronic databases (from 2000 to present) to identify studies that included both robotic and male infertility. In all, 23 studies were found, 12 of which met our inclusion criteria. Articles were excluded if the study did not include both male infertility and robotics. Robotic assistance for microsurgical procedures in male infertility appears to be safe and feasible. It has several advantages including elimination of tremor, multi-view magnification, additional instrument arms, and enhanced dexterity with articulating instrument arms. It also has a short learning curve with a small skin incision. However, larger, prospective studies are needed to establish the clinical benefits over standard microsurgery.

  13. Laser fluorescence of caries detection in permanent teeth in vitro: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

    PubMed

    Rosa, Maria I; Schambeck, Vilson S; Dondossola, Eduardo R; Alexandre, Maria Cm; Tuon, Lisiane; Grande, Antonio J; Hugo, Fernando

    2016-11-01

    The detection of dental caries in the early stages, particularly on the occlusal surfaces, has become a mainstay of contemporary clinical practice. The objective of the study was to verify the accuracy of laser fluorescence for caries detection. A comprehensive search of the MEDLINE (PubMed), EMBase, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, IBECS, BIOSIS, Web of Science, SCOPUS, Congress Abstracts, and Grey literature databases was undertaken from 1980 through January 2016. We included cross-sectional studies that evaluated laser fluorescence in caries diagnoses in vitro and compared them with histological analyses. A total of 39 articles were included in the meta-analysis, which included 2082 caries sites. The pooled sensitivity was 0.71 (0.69, 0.73), and the specificity was 0.81 (0.73, 0.82). The diagnostic odds ratio was 14.93 (11.2, 19.9). A summary receiver operating characteristic curve was constructed. The area under the curve was 0.865. This meta-analysis showed that laser fluorescence in vitro had the ability to diagnose occlusal caries lesions in permanent teeth and enamel and dentin caries. © 2016 Chinese Cochrane Center, West China Hospital of Sichuan University and John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd.

  14. New approach to managing genital warts.

    PubMed

    Lopaschuk, Catharine C

    2013-07-01

    To summarize and determine the appropriate use for the new and old management tools for genital warts. The following databases were searched: MEDLINE, PubMed, EMBASE, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, ACP Journal Club, and Trip. The bibliographies of retrieved papers were also reviewed. Clinical trials, qualitative review articles, consensus reports, and clinical practice guidelines were retrieved. Symptomatic warts are prevalent in at least 1% of the population between the ages of 15 and 49, with estimates of up to 50% of the population being infected with human papillomavirus at some point in their lifetime. Imiquimod and podophyllotoxin are 2 new treatments for external genital warts that are less painful and can be applied by patients at home. In addition, the quadrivalent human papillomavirus vaccine has been shown to be efficacious in preventing genital warts and cervical cancer. There is still a role for the older treatment methods in certain situations, such as intravaginal, urethral, anal, or recalcitrant warts; or for pregnant patients. The new treatments of external genital warts can reduce the pain of treatment and the number of office visits. Other treatment methods are still useful in certain situations.

  15. PubMedAlertMe - Standalone Windows-based PubMed SDI Software Application

    PubMed Central

    Ma’ayan, Avi

    2008-01-01

    PubMedAlertMe is a Windows-based software system for automatically receiving e-mail alert messages about recent publications listed on PubMed. The e-mail messages contain links to newly available abstracts listed on PubMed describing publications that were selectively returned from a specified list of queries. Links are also provided to directly export citations to EndNote, and links are provided to directly forward articles to colleagues. The program is standalone. Thus, it does not require a remote mail server or user registration. PubMedAlertMe is free software, and can be downloaded from: http://amp.pharm.mssm.edu/PubMedAlertMe/PubMedAlertMe_setup.zip PMID:18402930

  16. MEDLINE end-user survey: the University of Florida experience.

    PubMed

    Hsu, P P

    1991-01-01

    The University of Florida Health Science Center Library (UF-HSCL) surveyed MEDLINE end-user activities of the faculty from the six colleges which the UF-HSCL serves. A questionnaire was developed and sent to all faculty members. The Basic SAS program was used to analyze the collected data. This survey was intended to identify the users, the reasons for faculty members not being end users, the purpose for searching MEDLINE, the information retrieval methods, the level of end-user satisfaction, and the librarian's role in information retrieval activities. Many findings from this survey were in agreement with those of the 1988 study by the National Library of Medicine.

  17. Welcome to MedlinePlus en español

    MedlinePlus

    ... promote the new Spanish-language MedlinePlus.gov/salud Web site. Don Francisco, the popular Hispanic television host, ... and promote a free, comprehensive, authoritative health information Web site for Spanish speakers in the United States ...

  18. Coronary Artery Bypass Surgery: MedlinePlus Health Topic

    MedlinePlus

    ... Coronary Artery Bypass (Texas Heart Institute) Also in Spanish Coronary Artery Bypass Graft Surgery (Beyond the Basics) ( ... Radiology, Radiological Society of North America) Also in Spanish Living With Cardiac Rehabilitation: MedlinePlus Health Topic (National ...

  19. Mentoring In Medicine | NIH MedlinePlus the Magazine

    MedlinePlus

    ... National Library of Medicine Welcomes 500 Students to "Science Pathfinders" Event at the National Institutes of Health ... 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization for federal tax purposes. Web site: www.fnlm.org Mobile MedlinePlus Trusted ...

  20. Setting priorities for knowledge translation of Cochrane reviews for health equity: Evidence for Equity.

    PubMed

    Tugwell, Peter; Petkovic, Jennifer; Welch, Vivian; Vincent, Jennifer; Bhutta, Zulfiqar A; Churchill, Rachel; deSavigny, Don; Mbuagbaw, Lawrence; Pantoja, Tomas

    2017-12-02

    A focus on equity in health can be seen in many global development goals and reports, research and international declarations. With the development of a relevant framework and methods, the Campbell and Cochrane Equity Methods Group has encouraged the application of an 'equity lens' to systematic reviews, and many organizations publish reviews intended to address health equity. The purpose of the Evidence for Equity (E4E) project was to conduct a priority-setting exercise and apply an equity lens by developing a knowledge translation product comprising summaries of systematic reviews from the Cochrane Library. E4E translates evidence from systematic reviews into 'friendly front end' summaries for policy makers. The following topic areas with high burdens of disease globally, were selected for the pilot: diabetes/obesity, HIV/AIDS, malaria, nutrition, and mental health/depression. For each topic area, a "stakeholder panel" was assembled that included policymakers and researchers. A systematic search of Cochrane reviews was conducted for each area to identify equity-relevant interventions with a meaningful impact. Panel chairs developed a rating sheet which was used by all panels to rank the importance of these interventions by: 1) Ease of Implementation; 2) Health System Requirements; 3)Universality/Generalizability/Share of Burden; and 4) Impact on Inequities/Effect on equity. The ratings of panel members were averaged for each intervention and criterion, and interventions were ordered according to the average overall ratings. Stakeholder panels identified the top 10 interventions from their respective topic areas. The evidence on these interventions is being summarized with an equity focus and the results posted online, at http://methods.cochrane.org/equity/e4e-series . This method provides an explicit approach to setting priorities by systematic review groups and funders for providing decision makers with evidence for the most important equity

  1. Twelve years of scientific production on Medline by Latin American spine surgeons.

    PubMed

    Falavigna, Asdrubal; Botelho, Ricardo Vieira; Teles, Alisson Roberto; da Silva, Pedro Guarise; Martins, Delio; Guyot, Juan Pablo; Gonzalez, Alvaro Silva; Avila, José Maria Jiménez; Defino, Helton Luiz Aparecido

    2014-01-01

    Despite the small contribution of LA in the Science Citation Index (SCI), a growing contribution by LA research to international literature has been observed in recent years. Systematic review. To evaluate the scientific contribution of Latin American (LA) Spine Surgeons in the last decade. A literature search of publications by LA spinal surgeons on topics concerning the spine or spinal cord was performed using an online database; Pubmed.gov. The results were limited to articles published from January 2000 to December 2011. The quality of the publication was evaluated with the journal impact factor (IF), Oxford classification and number of citations. This study comprised 320 articles published in the Medline database by LA spine surgeons from 2000 to 2011. In recent years, there has been an increase in the number of publications by LA spine surgeons. It was observed that 38.4% of LA papers were published in LA journals. 46.6% of the articles were published in journals with an IF lower than 1, and there was no statistically significant difference in the number of articles published in journals with a higher IF during the period. Linear-by-linear association analysis demonstrated an improvement in the level of evidence provided by LA articles published in recent years. This study showed a growth in the number of publications in last 12 years by LA spinal surgeons. It is necessary to discuss a way to increase quantity and quality of scientific publications, mainly through a better education in research.

  2. Twelve Years of Scientific Production on Medline by Latin American Spine Surgeons

    PubMed Central

    Falavigna, Asdrubal; Botelho, Ricardo Vieira; Teles, Alisson Roberto; Guarise da Silva, Pedro; Martins, Delio; Guyot, Juan Pablo; Gonzalez, Alvaro Silva; Avila, José Maria Jiménez; Defino, Helton Luiz Aparecido

    2014-01-01

    Background Despite the small contribution of LA in the Science Citation Index (SCI), a growing contribution by LA research to international literature has been observed in recent years. Study Design Systematic review. Purpose To evaluate the scientific contribution of Latin American (LA) Spine Surgeons in the last decade. Methods A literature search of publications by LA spinal surgeons on topics concerning the spine or spinal cord was performed using an online database; Pubmed.gov. The results were limited to articles published from January 2000 to December 2011. The quality of the publication was evaluated with the journal impact factor (IF), Oxford classification and number of citations. Results This study comprised 320 articles published in the Medline database by LA spine surgeons from 2000 to 2011. In recent years, there has been an increase in the number of publications by LA spine surgeons. It was observed that 38.4% of LA papers were published in LA journals. 46.6% of the articles were published in journals with an IF lower than 1, and there was no statistically significant difference in the number of articles published in journals with a higher IF during the period. Linear-by-linear association analysis demonstrated an improvement in the level of evidence provided by LA articles published in recent years. Conclusions This study showed a growth in the number of publications in last 12 years by LA spinal surgeons. It is necessary to discuss a way to increase quantity and quality of scientific publications, mainly through a better education in research. PMID:24505336

  3. Injection therapy for subacute and chronic low back pain: an updated Cochrane review.

    PubMed

    Staal, J Bart; de Bie, Rob A; de Vet, Henrica C W; Hildebrandt, Jan; Nelemans, Patty

    2009-01-01

    A systematic review of randomized controlled trials (RCTs). To determine if injection therapy is more effective than placebo or other treatments for patients with subacute or chronic low back pain. The effectiveness of injection therapy for low back pain is still debatable. Heterogeneity of target tissue, pharmacological agent, and dosage, generally found in RCTs, point to the need for clinically valid comparisons in a literature synthesis. We updated the search of the earlier systematic review and searched the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, MEDLINE, and EMBASE databases up to March 2007 for relevant trials reported in English, French, German, Dutch, and Nordic languages. We also screened references from trials identified. RCTs on the effects of injection therapy involving epidural, facet, or local sites for subacute or chronic low back pain were included. Studies that compared the effects of intradiscal injections, prolotherapy, or ozone therapy with other treatments were excluded unless injection therapy with another pharmaceutical agent (no placebo treatment) was part of one of the treatment arms. Studies about injections in sacroiliac joints and studies evaluating the effects of epidural steroids for radicular pain were also excluded. Eighteen trials (1179 participants) were included in this review. The injection sites varied from epidural sites and facet joints (i.e. intra-articular injections, peri-articular injections and nerve blocks) to local sites (i.e. tender-and trigger points). The drugs that were studied consisted of corticosteroids, local anesthetics, and a variety of other drugs. The methodologic quality of the trials was limited with 10 of 18 trials rated as having a high methodologic quality. Statistical pooling was not possible because of clinical heterogeneity in the trials. Overall, the results indicated that there is no strong evidence for or against the use of any type of injection therapy. There is insufficient evidence to

  4. A study comparing centralized CD-ROM and decentralized intranet access to MEDLINE

    PubMed Central

    Darmoni, Stefan J.; Benichou, Jacques; Thirion, Benoit; Hellot, Marie France; Fuss, Jacques

    2000-01-01

    Objective: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of a decentralized intranet access in each medical department as opposed to centralized unique MEDLINE access in the medical library. Design: A two-phase questionnaire to evaluate MEDLINE use was given to junior and senior physicians at Rouen University Hospital (RUH). Phase I (August–October 1996) corresponded to a time period when centralized access was the only means of access available and phase II (August–October 1997) to a time period following the introduction of decentralized intranet access. Results: A total of 168 physicians filled out at least one phase of the questionnaire, among whom 123 (73%) filled out both phases. Use of MEDLINE significantly increased in 1997 (average of 10.2 ± 1.1 searches in three months) versus 1996 (average of 4.9 ± 0.7 searches in three months, P < 0.0001). The aim of searches changed, becoming significantly more care oriented in phase II (P < 0.0001). The number of searches performed by the physicians alone increased (P < 0.0001) and searches performed by the librarian decreased (P < 0.0001) in phase II. The method of searches also changed, as searches by author (P < 0.0001), by journal (P = 0.0042), and by free word (P = 0.0027) increased in phase II. Knowledge of the following concepts of MEDLINE significantly increased: explosion (P < 0.0001), scope note (P < 0.0001), Abridged Index Medicus (AIM) journals (P < 0.0001), Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) qualifier (P < 0.0001), and focus (P < 0.0001). Conclusion: A decentralized intranet access to MEDLINE increased the number of searches and knowledge of this bibliographic database. MEDLINE intranet access modified the purpose and the methods of searching. PMID:10783970

  5. Assessment of educational games for health professions: a systematic review of trends and outcomes.

    PubMed

    Abdulmajed, Hind; Park, Yoon Soo; Tekian, Ara

    2015-04-01

    Traditional lecturing used in teaching has the lowest retention rate; the use of games as part of an instruction method may enhance retention and reinforce learning by creating a dynamic educational environment. This study aims to systematically review the literature on educational games for the health professions to identify trends and investigate assessment tools used to measure its learning outcomes. Seven databases were used in the search: ERIC, Education Research Complete, Medline, Medline Complete, Academic Search Complete, The Cochrane Library and PubMed. The search identified 2865 papers; among them, 1259 were excluded and 22 were evaluated. The selection incorporated five full papers which focused directly on the health professionals. Two studies involved the use of board games and two studies involved card games, crossword puzzles and one study involved a team quiz competition. Overall, studies lacked a strong link between the use of games for both instructional and assessment purposes. Gaming makes a positive impact on the teaching/learning process. However, existing assessment methodologies have been not fully captured the learning that may occur in these games. Robust research is needed to address the use of games that have been assessed objectively.

  6. [A statistical analysis and perspective of headache-related papers covered in 2011 PubMed].

    PubMed

    Zhang, Ming-jie; Yu, Sheng-yuan; Chu, Bing-qian; Dai, Wei

    2013-01-01

    To investigate the distribution and hot spots of literatures on headache by bibliometric analysis in order to provide reference for further study. Literatures that contained headache or migraine in text words published in 2011 in PubMed databases (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Pubmed) were searched. Journals, countries and subjects were bibliometrically analysed. There were 3683 papers involved to headache published in PubMed in 2011, of which 1527 papers were on headache research. The number of papers on headache research published by USA was the most followed by Italy and Germany (USA 23.25%, Italy 10.74%, Germany 5.83%). The mainly studied subjects were therapy (29.60%), pathophysiology (18.66%) and etiology (16.31%). 14.86% papers published in Cephalalgia, which is one of the most important journals, reported negative results. The emphasis of headache research was on migraine. Therapy, pathophysiology and etiology were the hot spot. Literatures with negative result attracted authors to give the more attention.

  7. Chronic Infections of the Urinary Tract and Bladder Cancer Risk: a Systematic Review.

    PubMed

    Anderson-Otunu, Oghenetejiri; Akhtar, Saeed

    2016-01-01

    Literature on the relationship between recurrent urinary tract infections and urinary bladder carcinoma risk has been inconsistent. Therefore, we carried out this systematic review of observational studies to ascertain if there is any association between chronic urinary tract infection and urinary bladder carcinoma. A total of 10 databases were searched using Boolean: CINAHL, PUBMED, Google Scholar, Medline, Science Direct, SCIRUS, Cochrane, UK PubMed central, NHS evidence and WHO-website. The search yielded an initial hit of 3,518 articles and after screening and critical appraisal, seven studies were included for this review. Four articles reported an association between chronic urinary tract infections and bladder cancer while three concluded a weak or no association at least in one gender. Main findings in this review were that most of the studies reported an association between chronic urinary tract infections and bladder cancer risk. However, inferences about the causal association between chronic urinary tract infections and bladder cancer risk should be drawn cautiously considering the methodological limitations of case-control studies included in this review. Therefore, more empirical evidence is needed to determine the causal nature of relationships between chronic urinary tract infections and bladder cancer risk.

  8. Children's perceptions of smile esthetics and their influence on social judgment.

    PubMed

    Rossini, Gabriele; Parrini, Simone; Castroflorio, Tommaso; Fortini, Arturo; Deregibus, Andrea; Debernardi, Cesare L

    2016-11-01

    To define a threshold of acceptance of smile esthetics for children and adolescents. A systematic search in the medical literature (PubMed, PubMed Central, National Library of Medicine's Medline, Embase, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Clinical Trials, Web of Knowledge, Scopus, Google Scholar, and LILACs) was performed to identify all peer-reviewed papers reporting data regarding the evaluation of children's and adolescents' perceptions of dental esthetic factors. The search was conducted using a research strategy based on keywords such as "children," "adolescents," "smile aesthetics perception," "smile aesthetics evaluation." Studies analyzing smile esthetics involving at least 10 observers younger than 18 years of age were selected. Among the 1667 analyzed articles, five studies were selected for the final review process. No study included in the review analyzed perception of smile anomalies in a quantitative or qualitative way, thus no threshold was identified for smile features. Among the analyzed samples, unaltered smiles were always significantly associated with better evaluation scores when compared with altered smiles. Smile esthetics influence social perception during childhood and adolescence. However, thresholds of smile esthetic acceptance in children and adolescents are still not available.

  9. Evaluating characteristics of PROSPERO records as predictors of eventual publication of non-Cochrane systematic reviews: a meta-epidemiological study protocol.

    PubMed

    Ruano, Juan; Gómez-García, Francisco; Gay-Mimbrera, Jesús; Aguilar-Luque, Macarena; Fernández-Rueda, José Luis; Fernández-Chaichio, Jesús; Alcalde-Mellado, Patricia; Carmona-Fernandez, Pedro J; Sanz-Cabanillas, Juan Luis; Viguera-Guerra, Isabel; Franco-García, Francisco; Cárdenas-Aranzana, Manuel; Romero, José Luis Hernández; Gonzalez-Padilla, Marcelino; Isla-Tejera, Beatriz; Garcia-Nieto, Antonio Velez

    2018-03-09

    Epidemiology and the reporting characteristics of systematic reviews (SRs) and meta-analyses (MAs) are well known. However, no study has analyzed the influence of protocol features on the probability that a study's results will be finally reported, thereby indirectly assessing the reporting bias of International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews (PROSPERO) registration records. The objective of this study is to explore which factors are associated with a higher probability that results derived from a non-Cochrane PROSPERO registration record for a systematic review will be finally reported as an original article in a scientific journal. The PROSPERO repository will be web scraped to automatically and iteratively obtain all completed non-Cochrane registration records stored from February 2011 to December 2017. Downloaded records will be screened, and those with less than 90% fulfilled or are duplicated (i.e., those sharing titles and reviewers) will be excluded. Manual and human-supervised automatic methods will be used for data extraction, depending on the data source (fields of PROSPERO registration records, bibliometric databases, etc.). Records will be classified into published, discontinued, and abandoned review subgroups. All articles derived from published reviews will be obtained through multiple parallel searches using the full protocol "title" and/or "list reviewers" in MEDLINE/PubMed databases and Google Scholar. Reviewer, author, article, and journal metadata will be obtained using different sources. R and Python programming and analysis languages will be used to describe the datasets; perform text mining, machine learning, and deep learning analyses; and visualize the data. We will report the study according to the recommendations for meta-epidemiological studies adapted from the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) statement for SRs and MAs. This meta-epidemiological study will explore, for the first time

  10. Eradication of tetanus

    PubMed Central

    Thwaites, C. L.; Loan, H. T.

    2015-01-01

    Introduction The causative agent of tetanus, Clostridium tetani is widespread in the environment throughout the world and cannot be eradicated. To reduce the number of cases of tetanus efforts are focussed on prevention using vaccination and post-exposure wound care. Sources of data Medline, Pubmed and Cochrane databases; World Health Organization and United Nations Children's Fund publications. Areas of agreement The maternal and neonatal tetanus elimination initiative has resulted in significant reductions in mortality from neonatal tetanus throughout the world. Areas of controversy Although there are few data available it is likely that large numbers of children and adults, particularly men, remain unprotected due to lack of booster immunization. Areas timely for developing research It remains unclear how HIV and malaria affect both responses to vaccination and transplacental transfer of antibodies or how this might affect timing of vaccination doses. PMID:26598719

  11. What evidence is available on end-of-life (EOL) care and Latino elders? A literature review.

    PubMed

    Cruz-Oliver, Dulce M; Talamantes, Melissa; Sanchez-Reilly, Sandra

    2014-02-01

    Low-income and minority persons, such as Latinos, encounter substantial barriers in accessing effective end-of-life (EOL) care. This study intends to review current evidence on how to deliver EOL care to Latino elders. Literature search in PubMed and Ovid Web sites of articles indexed in Medline (1948-2011), Cochrane (2005-2011), Embase, and PsychInfo (1967-2011) databases. Articles were included if they contained (1) study participants' race/ethnicity, (2) adults or population older than 60 years, and (3) information related to EOL care. A total of 64 abstracts were reviewed, and 38 articles met the inclusion criteria. After reviewing the quality of evidence, 4 themes were identified and summarized: EOL preferences, hospice, Latino culture, and caregiving. Latino elders have traditional acculturation practices, face EOL decisions with family support, and, if educated, are receptive toward hospice and caregiver support.

  12. Perioperative hypothermia and incidence of surgical wound infection: a bibliographic study

    PubMed Central

    da Silva, Aline Batista; Peniche, Aparecida de Cassia Giani

    2014-01-01

    The purpose of this review article was to understand and analyze the scientific production related to the occurrence of perioperative hypothermia and the incidence of infection on the surgical site. For this purpose, a search was conducted in the databases LILACS, MEDLINE, PubMed, CINAHL and Cochrane, using the health science descriptors DECS, from 2004 to 2009. A total of 91 articles were found. After eliminating duplicate items and using selection criteria for inclusion, six manuscripts remained for analysis. The studies were classified as retrospective, prospective, case studies, and clinical trials. After analysis, the majority of studies showed that hypothermia must be prevented during the perioperative period to reduce complications in the healing process of the surgical incision. Therefore, unadverted hypothermia directly influences in surgical site healing, increasing the incidence of infection in the surgical wound. PMID:25628208

  13. Antenatal magnesium sulfate is beneficial or harmful in very preterm and extremely preterm neonates: a new insight.

    PubMed

    Garg, Bhawan Deep

    2018-01-17

    To evaluate whether antenatal MgSO 4 is beneficial or harmful in very preterm and extremely preterm neonates. We retrieved published literature through searches of PubMed or Medline, CINAHL, and the Cochrane Library. Results were restricted to systematic reviews, meta-analysis, randomized controlled trials (RCTs), and relevant observational studies. Evidence revealed that antenatal MgSO 4 has neuroprotective role in preterm neonates and it decreased the risk of cerebral palsy and gross motor dysfunction. Evidences regarding association of antenatal MgSO 4 with feed intolerance, NEC and SIP were from cohort studies and controversial. We should continue use antenatal MgSO 4 to all eligible patients according to protocol till the more robust evidence will suggest association with gastrointestinal complications. In the meantime, we should have a high index of suspicion of gastrointestinal complications in extremely preterms particularly <26 weeks of gestation.

  14. Imaging in Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy and Traumatic Brain Injury

    PubMed Central

    Shetty, Teena; Raince, Avtar; Manning, Erin; Tsiouris, Apostolos John

    2016-01-01

    Context: The diagnosis of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) can only be made pathologically, and there is no concordance of defined clinical criteria for premorbid diagnosis. The absence of established criteria and the insufficient imaging findings to detect this disease in a living athlete are of growing concern. Evidence Acquisition: The article is a review of the current literature on CTE. Databases searched include Medline, PubMed, JAMA evidence, and evidence-based medicine guidelines Cochrane Library, Hospital for Special Surgery, and Cornell Library databases. Study Design: Clinical review. Level of Evidence: Level 4. Results: Chronic traumatic encephalopathy cannot be diagnosed on imaging. Examples of imaging findings in common types of head trauma are discussed. Conclusion: Further study is necessary to correlate the clinical and imaging findings of repetitive head injuries with the pathologic diagnosis of CTE. PMID:26733590

  15. Can electronic search engines optimize screening of search results in systematic reviews: an empirical study.

    PubMed

    Sampson, Margaret; Barrowman, Nicholas J; Moher, David; Clifford, Tammy J; Platt, Robert W; Morrison, Andra; Klassen, Terry P; Zhang, Li

    2006-02-24

    Most electronic search efforts directed at identifying primary studies for inclusion in systematic reviews rely on the optimal Boolean search features of search interfaces such as DIALOG and Ovid. Our objective is to test the ability of an Ultraseek search engine to rank MEDLINE records of the included studies of Cochrane reviews within the top half of all the records retrieved by the Boolean MEDLINE search used by the reviewers. Collections were created using the MEDLINE bibliographic records of included and excluded studies listed in the review and all records retrieved by the MEDLINE search. Records were converted to individual HTML files. Collections of records were indexed and searched through a statistical search engine, Ultraseek, using review-specific search terms. Our data sources, systematic reviews published in the Cochrane library, were included if they reported using at least one phase of the Cochrane Highly Sensitive Search Strategy (HSSS), provided citations for both included and excluded studies and conducted a meta-analysis using a binary outcome measure. Reviews were selected if they yielded between 1000-6000 records when the MEDLINE search strategy was replicated. Nine Cochrane reviews were included. Included studies within the Cochrane reviews were found within the first 500 retrieved studies more often than would be expected by chance. Across all reviews, recall of included studies into the top 500 was 0.70. There was no statistically significant difference in ranking when comparing included studies with just the subset of excluded studies listed as excluded in the published review. The relevance ranking provided by the search engine was better than expected by chance and shows promise for the preliminary evaluation of large results from Boolean searches. A statistical search engine does not appear to be able to make fine discriminations concerning the relevance of bibliographic records that have been pre-screened by systematic reviewers.

  16. Generating PubMed Chemical Queries for Consumer Health Literature

    PubMed Central

    Loo, Jeffery; Chang, Hua Florence; Hochstein, Colette; Sun, Ying

    2005-01-01

    Two popular NLM resources that provide information for consumers about chemicals and their safety are the Household Products Database and Haz-Map. Search queries to PubMed via web links were generated from these databases. The query retrieves consumer health-oriented literature about adverse effects of chemicals. The retrieval was limited to a manageable set of 20 to 60 citations, achieved by successively applying increasing limits to the search until the desired number of references was reached. PMID:16779322

  17. Non-prescription (OTC) oral analgesics for acute pain - an overview of Cochrane reviews.

    PubMed

    Moore, R Andrew; Wiffen, Philip J; Derry, Sheena; Maguire, Terry; Roy, Yvonne M; Tyrrell, Laila

    2015-11-04

    Non-prescription (over-the-counter, or OTC) analgesics (painkillers) are used frequently. They are available in various brands, package sizes, formulations, and dose. They can be used for a range of different types of pain, but this overview reports on how well they work for acute pain (pain of short duration, usually with rapid onset). Thirty-nine Cochrane reviews of randomised trials have examined the analgesic efficacy of individual drug interventions in acute postoperative pain. To examine published Cochrane reviews for information about the efficacy of pain medicines available without prescription using data from acute postoperative pain. We identified OTC analgesics available in the UK, Australia, Canada, and the USA by examining online pharmacy websites. We also included some analgesics (diclofenac potassium, dexketoprofen, dipyrone) of importance in parts of the world, but not currently available in these jurisdictions.We identified systematic reviews by searching the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (CDSR) on The Cochrane Library through a simple search strategy. All reviews were overseen by a single review group, had a standard title, and had as their primary outcome numbers of participants with at least 50% pain relief over four to six hours compared with placebo. From individual reviews we extracted the number needed to treat for an additional beneficial outcome (NNT) for this outcome for each drug/dose combination, and also calculated the success rate to achieve at least 50% of maximum pain relief. We also examined the number of participants experiencing any adverse event, and whether the incidence was different from placebo. We found information on 21 different OTC analgesic drugs, doses, and formulations, using information from 10 Cochrane reviews, supplemented by information from one non-Cochrane review with additional information on ibuprofen formulations (high quality evidence). The lowest (best) NNT values were for combinations of

  18. Chi-square-based scoring function for categorization of MEDLINE citations.

    PubMed

    Kastrin, A; Peterlin, B; Hristovski, D

    2010-01-01

    Text categorization has been used in biomedical informatics for identifying documents containing relevant topics of interest. We developed a simple method that uses a chi-square-based scoring function to determine the likelihood of MEDLINE citations containing genetic relevant topic. Our procedure requires construction of a genetic and a nongenetic domain document corpus. We used MeSH descriptors assigned to MEDLINE citations for this categorization task. We compared frequencies of MeSH descriptors between two corpora applying chi-square test. A MeSH descriptor was considered to be a positive indicator if its relative observed frequency in the genetic domain corpus was greater than its relative observed frequency in the nongenetic domain corpus. The output of the proposed method is a list of scores for all the citations, with the highest score given to those citations containing MeSH descriptors typical for the genetic domain. Validation was done on a set of 734 manually annotated MEDLINE citations. It achieved predictive accuracy of 0.87 with 0.69 recall and 0.64 precision. We evaluated the method by comparing it to three machine-learning algorithms (support vector machines, decision trees, naïve Bayes). Although the differences were not statistically significantly different, results showed that our chi-square scoring performs as good as compared machine-learning algorithms. We suggest that the chi-square scoring is an effective solution to help categorize MEDLINE citations. The algorithm is implemented in the BITOLA literature-based discovery support system as a preprocessor for gene symbol disambiguation process.

  19. Public accessibility of biomedical articles from PubMed Central reduces journal readership--retrospective cohort analysis.

    PubMed

    Davis, Philip M

    2013-07-01

    Does PubMed Central--a government-run digital archive of biomedical articles--compete with scientific society journals? A longitudinal, retrospective cohort analysis of 13,223 articles (5999 treatment, 7224 control) published in 14 society-run biomedical research journals in nutrition, experimental biology, physiology, and radiology between February 2008 and January 2011 reveals a 21.4% reduction in full-text hypertext markup language (HTML) article downloads and a 13.8% reduction in portable document format (PDF) article downloads from the journals' websites when U.S. National Institutes of Health-sponsored articles (treatment) become freely available from the PubMed Central repository. In addition, the effect of PubMed Central on reducing PDF article downloads is increasing over time, growing at a rate of 1.6% per year. There was no longitudinal effect for full-text HTML downloads. While PubMed Central may be providing complementary access to readers traditionally underserved by scientific journals, the loss of article readership from the journal website may weaken the ability of the journal to build communities of interest around research papers, impede the communication of news and events to scientific society members and journal readers, and reduce the perceived value of the journal to institutional subscribers.

  20. Antibiotics for upper respiratory tract infections: an overview of Cochrane reviews.

    PubMed

    Arroll, B

    2005-03-01

    The aim of this paper is to review the four Cochrane reviews of antibiotics for upper respiratory tract infections. Each Cochrane review was read and summarized, and results presented as odds ratios (as in the Internet version) and, where relevant, numbers needed to treat. The reviews of antibiotics for acute otitis media have concluded that benefit is not great with a number needed to treat for a benefit (NNTB) of 15. Recent US guidelines are recommending a delay in prescriptions in children over the age of 6 months. For streptococcal tonsillitis, the Cochrane reviewers suggest that antibiotic use seems to be discretionary rather than prohibited or mandatory. This is because the benefit in terms of symptoms is only about 16h (NNTB from 2 to 7 at day 3 for pain) compared with placebo, and that serious complications, such as rheumatic fever and glomerulonephritis, are now rare in developed countries. The reviewers do, however, suggest that antibiotics are considered in populations in whom these complications are more common. This is an area of debate, as the Infectious Disease Society of America (2002) recommends routine treatment. [Clin. Infect. Dis. 35 (2002) 113] There is good evidence and consensus that there is no indication for antibiotics for the common cold. The situation with acute purulent rhinitis is less clear, as new evidence suggests that antibiotics may be effective for acute purulent rhinitis (NNTB from 6 to 8). However, as most people with acute purulent rhinitis improve without antibiotics, giving antibiotics is not justified as an initial treatment. For acute maxillary sinusitis, the evidence suggests that antibiotics are effective for people with radiologically confirmed sinusitis. The reviewers suggest that clinicians should weigh up the modest benefits (NNTB from 3 to 6) against the potential for adverse effects. The use of antibiotics for acute otitis media, sore throat and streptococcal tonsillitis, common cold and acute purulent rhinitis

  1. Expanding Hearing Healthcare | NIH MedlinePlus the Magazine

    MedlinePlus

    ... Hearing Loss National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders: Hearing Aids Fact Sheet (pdf) Hearing Loss Association of America Fall 2017 Issue: Volume 12 Number 3 Page 13-15 MedlinePlus Subscribe Magazine Information Contact Us Viewers & Players Friends of the National ...

  2. The MedlinePlus public user interface: studies of design challenges and opportunities.

    PubMed

    Marill, Jennifer L; Miller, Naomi; Kitendaugh, Paula

    2006-01-01

    What are the challenges involved in designing, modifying, and improving a major health information portal that serves over sixty million page views a month? MedlinePlus, the National Library of Medicine's (NLM's) consumer health Website, is examined. Challenges are presented as six "studies," which describe selected design issues and how NLM staff resolved them. Improving MedlinePlus is an iterative process. Changes in the public user interface are ongoing, reflecting Web design trends, usability testing recommendations, user survey results, new technical requirements, and the need to grow the site in an orderly way. Testing and analysis should accompany Website design modifications. New technologies may enhance a site but also introduce problems. Further modifications to MedlinePlus will be informed by the experiences described here.

  3. 77 FR 65545 - Mr. Jesse S. Capel and Mr. Hilton J. Cochran; EWP LLC; Notice of Transfer of Exemption

    Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

    2012-10-29

    ... DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY Federal Energy Regulatory Commission [Project No. 4815-009] Mr. Jesse S. Capel and Mr. Hilton J. Cochran; EWP LLC; Notice of Transfer of Exemption 1. By application filed on July 30, 2012 and supplemented on August 14, 2012, Mr. Jesse S. Capel and Mr. Hilton J. Cochran and EWP...

  4. Reporting and Handling Missing Outcome Data in Mental Health: A Systematic Review of Cochrane Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Spineli, Loukia M.; Pandis, Nikolaos; Salanti, Georgia

    2015-01-01

    Objectives: The purpose of the study was to provide empirical evidence about the reporting of methodology to address missing outcome data and the acknowledgement of their impact in Cochrane systematic reviews in the mental health field. Methods: Systematic reviews published in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews after January 1, 2009 by…

  5. Systematic reviews of physical and rehabilitation medicine Cochrane contents. Part 1. Disabilities due to spinal disorders and pain syndromes in adults.

    PubMed

    Negrini, S; Imperio, G; Villafañe, J H; Negrini, F; Zaina, F

    2013-08-01

    This article is the first in a series presenting the strongest published evidence for physical and rehabilitation medicine (PRM) to date coming from the Cochrane Collaboration. The intent of the series is to stimulate ideas for reviews and research in neglected areas of PRM. To systematically review the rehabilitation contents of the Cochrane Collaboration on disabilities due to spinal disorders or pain syndromes in adults. The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews was searched at the end of June 2013 for articles relevant for PRM about disabilities resulting from spinal disorders or pain syndromes in adults. Retrieved papers were classified according to the PRM approach: active therapies, which require active participation by patients to achieve treatment goals, and passive treatments, which rely on the application of external forces. The quality of the reviews was checked against the AMSTAR checklist. Reviews on spinal disorders or pain syndromes were found in the Cochrane Back Group (CBG) and in the Pain, Palliative and Supportive Care Group (CPPSCG). Thirty-eight (42.8%) of 89 Cochrane reviews in the CBG and 7 (2.4%) of 293 Cochrane reviews in the CPPSCG were included. All were of high quality (range, 8-11 points out of 11 on the AMSTAR checklist). The contents of the reviews are given in detail. This review presents an overview of the current evidence for PRM in the treatment of disabilities due to spinal disorders or pain syndromes in adults. Within PRM there is ample space for research in the Cochrane Collaboration and for producing original studies (randomized controlled trials [RCTs]). To apply evidence-based clinical practice, clinicians must be familiar with the current best evidence.

  6. High school peer tutors teach MedlinePlus: a model for Hispanic outreach*

    PubMed Central

    Warner, Debra G.; Olney, Cynthia A.; Wood, Fred B.; Hansen, Lucille; Bowden, Virginia M.

    2005-01-01

    Objectives: The objective was to introduce the MedlinePlus Website to the predominantly Hispanic residents of the Lower Rio Grande Valley region of Texas by partnering with a health professions magnet high school (known as Med High). Methods: Community assessment was used in the planning stages and included pre-project focus groups with students and teachers. Outreach methods included peer tutor selection, train-the-trainer sessions, school and community outreach, and pre- and posttests of MedlinePlus training sessions. Evaluation methods included Web statistics; end-of-project interviews; focus groups with students, faculty, and librarians; and end-of-project surveys of students and faculty. Results: Four peer tutors reached more than 2,000 people during the project year. Students and faculty found MedlinePlus to be a useful resource. Faculty and librarians developed new or revised teaching methods incorporating MedlinePlus. The project enhanced the role of school librarians as agents of change at Med High. The project continues on a self-sustaining basis. Conclusions: Using peer tutors is an effective way to educate high school students about health information resources and, through the students, to reach families and community members. PMID:15858628

  7. Efficacy of interventions to combat tobacco addiction: Cochrane update of 2012 reviews.

    PubMed

    Hartmann-Boyce, Jamie; Stead, Lindsay F; Cahill, Kate; Lancaster, Tim

    2013-10-01

    The Cochrane Collaboration is an international not-for-profit organization which produces and disseminates systematic reviews of health-care interventions. This paper is the first in a series of annual updates of Cochrane reviews on tobacco addiction interventions. It also provides an up-to-date overview of review findings in this area to date and summary statistics for cessation reviews in which meta-analyses were conducted. In 2012, the Group published seven new reviews and updated 13 others. This update summarizes and comments on these reviews. It also summarizes key findings from all the other reviews in this area. New reviews in 2012 found that in smokers using pharmacotherapy, behavioural support improves success rates [risk ratio (RR) 1.16, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 1.09-1.24], and that combining behavioural support and pharmacotherapy aids cessation (RR 1.82, 95% CI = 1.66-2.00). Updated reviews established mobile phones as potentially helpful in aiding cessation (RR 1.71, 95% CI = 1.47-1.99), found that cytisine (RR 3.98, 95% CI = 2.01-7.87) and low-dose varenicline (RR 2.09, 95% CI = 1.56-2.78) aid smoking cessation, and found that training health professionals in smoking cessation improves patient cessation rates (RR 1.60, 95% CI = 1.26-2.03). The updated reviews confirmed the benefits of nicotine replacement therapy, standard dose varenicline and providing cessation treatment free of charge. Lack of demonstrated efficacy remained for partner support, expired-air carbon monoxide feedback and lung function feedback. Cochrane systematic review evidence for the first time establishes the efficacy of behavioural support over and above pharmacotherapy, as well as the efficacy of cytisine, mobile phone technology, low-dose varenicline and health professional training in promoting smoking cessation. © 2013 Society for the Study of Addiction.

  8. Complete Blood Count: MedlinePlus Lab Test Information

    MedlinePlus

    ... your lungs and to the rest of your body Hematocrit , a measurement of how much of your blood is made ... Internet]. Bethesda (MD): U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; Your Guide to Anemia; [cited ... MedlinePlus Health Topics Bleeding Disorders Blood Count ...

  9. Revisited: A Systematic Review of Therapeutic Hypothermia for Adult Patients Following Traumatic Brain Injury.

    PubMed

    Watson, Hannah I; Shepherd, Andrew A; Rhodes, Jonathan K J; Andrews, Peter J D

    2018-06-01

    Therapeutic hypothermia has been of topical interest for many years and with the publication of two international, multicenter randomized controlled trials, the evidence base now needs updating. The aim of this systematic review of randomized controlled trials is to assess the efficacy of therapeutic hypothermia in adult traumatic brain injury focusing on mortality, poor outcomes, and new pneumonia. The following databases were searched from January 1, 2011, to January 26, 2018: Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trial, MEDLINE, PubMed, and EMBASE. Only foreign articles published in the English language were included. Only articles that were randomized controlled trials investigating adult traumatic brain injury sustained following an acute, closed head injury were included. Two authors independently assessed at each stage. Quality was assessed using the Cochrane Collaboration's tool for assessing the risk of bias. All extracted data were combined using the Mantel-Haenszel estimator for pooled risk ratio with 95% CIs. p value of less than 0.05 was considered statistically significant. All statistical analyses were conducted using RevMan 5 (Cochrane Collaboration, Version 5.3, Copenhagen: The Nordic Cochrane Centre, The Cochrane Collaboration, 2014). Twenty-two studies with 2,346 patients are included. Randomized controlled trials with a low risk of bias show significantly more mortality in the therapeutic hypothermia group (risk ratio, 1.37; 95% CI, 1.04-1.79; p = 0.02), whereas randomized controlled trials with a high risk of bias show the opposite with a higher mortality in the control group (risk ratio, 0.70; 95% CI, 0.60-0.82; p < 0.00001). Overall, this review is in-keeping with the conclusions published by the most recent randomized controlled trials. High-quality studies show no significant difference in mortality, poor outcomes, or new pneumonia. In addition, this review shows a place for fever control in the management of traumatic brain injury.

  10. Comparison of PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar: strengths and weaknesses.

    PubMed

    Falagas, Matthew E; Pitsouni, Eleni I; Malietzis, George A; Pappas, Georgios

    2008-02-01

    The evolution of the electronic age has led to the development of numerous medical databases on the World Wide Web, offering search facilities on a particular subject and the ability to perform citation analysis. We compared the content coverage and practical utility of PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar. The official Web pages of the databases were used to extract information on the range of journals covered, search facilities and restrictions, and update frequency. We used the example of a keyword search to evaluate the usefulness of these databases in biomedical information retrieval and a specific published article to evaluate their utility in performing citation analysis. All databases were practical in use and offered numerous search facilities. PubMed and Google Scholar are accessed for free. The keyword search with PubMed offers optimal update frequency and includes online early articles; other databases can rate articles by number of citations, as an index of importance. For citation analysis, Scopus offers about 20% more coverage than Web of Science, whereas Google Scholar offers results of inconsistent accuracy. PubMed remains an optimal tool in biomedical electronic research. Scopus covers a wider journal range, of help both in keyword searching and citation analysis, but it is currently limited to recent articles (published after 1995) compared with Web of Science. Google Scholar, as for the Web in general, can help in the retrieval of even the most obscure information but its use is marred by inadequate, less often updated, citation information.

  11. Motor Control Exercise for Nonspecific Low Back Pain: A Cochrane Review.

    PubMed

    Saragiotto, Bruno T; Maher, Christopher G; Yamato, Tiê P; Costa, Leonardo O P; Costa, Luciola C Menezes; Ostelo, Raymond W J G; Macedo, Luciana G

    2016-08-15

    A systematic review. The aim of this review was to evaluate the effectiveness of motor control exercise (MCE) in patients with nonspecific low back pain (LBP). MCE is a common form of exercise used for managing LBP. MCE focuses on the activation of the deep trunk muscles and targets the restoration of control and coordination of these muscles, progressing to more complex and functional tasks integrating the activation of deep and global trunk muscles. We conducted electronic searches of CENTRAL, MEDLINE, EMBASE, five other databases, and two trials registers from their inception up to April 2015. Two independent review authors screened the search results, assessed risk of bias, and extracted the data. A third reviewer resolved any disagreement. We included randomized controlled trials comparing MCE with no treatment, another treatment, or as a supplement to other interventions in patients with nonspecific LBP. Primary outcomes were pain intensity and disability. We assessed risk of bias using the Cochrane Back and Neck (CBN) Review Group 12-item criteria. We combined results in a meta-analysis expressed as mean difference and 95% confidence interval. We assessed the overall quality of the evidence using the GRADE approach. We included 32 trials (n = 2628). Most included trials had a low risk of bias. For acute LBP, low to moderate quality evidence indicates no clinically important differences between MCE and spinal manipulative therapy or other forms of exercise. There is very low-quality evidence that the addition of MCE to medical management does not provide clinically important improvements. For recurrence at one year, there is very low-quality evidence that MCE and medical management decrease the risk of recurrence. For chronic LBP, there is low to moderate quality evidence that MCE is effective for reducing pain compared with minimal intervention. There is low to high-quality evidence that MCE is not clinically more effective than other exercises or manual

  12. Figure summarizer browser extensions for PubMed Central

    PubMed Central

    Agarwal, Shashank; Yu, Hong

    2011-01-01

    Summary: Figures in biomedical articles present visual evidence for research facts and help readers understand the article better. However, when figures are taken out of context, it is difficult to understand their content. We developed a summarization algorithm to summarize the content of figures and used it in our figure search engine (http://figuresearch.askhermes.org/). In this article, we report on the development of web browser extensions for Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome and Apple Safari to display summaries for figures in PubMed Central and NCBI Images. Availability: The extensions can be downloaded from http://figuresearch.askhermes.org/articlesearch/extensions.php. Contact: agarwal@uwm.edu PMID:21493658

  13. The accuracy of MEDLINE and Journal contents pages for papers published in Clinical Otolaryngology.

    PubMed

    De, S; Jones, T; Brazier, H; Jones, A S; Fenton, J E

    2001-02-01

    MEDLINE is widely used as a source for identifying and reviewing medical journal literature. Its accuracy is generally taken for granted, as is that of the contents pages published by the journals themselves. In this study of citation accuracy we examined the articles published in Clinical Otolaryngology and Allied Sciences from 1976 to 1998. The entries in MEDLINE were compared with the entries in the Journal's contents pages, and with the actual articles. Of 1651 articles published in the journal, one was omitted from MEDLINE and 25 (1.5%) were incorrectly cited, while 88 (5.3%) were incorrectly cited in the contents pages. Twenty-one (84%) of the errors in MEDLINE involved names of authors. Apart from incomplete retrieval of information for practice and research, errors could result in an author not getting credit for publications.

  14. What do Cochrane systematic reviews say about non-surgical interventions for urinary incontinence in women?

    PubMed

    Costa, Anderson Adriano Leal Freitas da; Vasconcellos, Igor Martins; Pacheco, Rafael Leite; Bella, Zsuzsanna Ilona Katalin de Jármy Di; Riera, Rachel

    2018-01-01

    Urinary incontinence is a highly prevalent condition that impacts self-esteem and overall quality of life. Many non-surgical treatment options are available, ranging from pharmacological approaches to pelvic exercises. We aimed to summarize the available evidence regarding these non-surgical interventions. Review of systematic reviews, conducted in the Discipline of Evidence-Based Medicine, Escola Paulista de Medicina, Universidade Federal de São Paulo (EPM-UNIFESP). A sensitive search was conducted to identify all Cochrane systematic reviews that fulfilled the inclusion criteria. Titles and abstracts were screened by two authors. We included 20 Cochrane systematic reviews: 4 assessing methods of vesical training, 3 evaluating pharmacological interventions, 4 studying pelvic floor muscle training approaches and 9 aimed at other alternatives (such as urethral injections, weighted vaginal cone use, acupuncture, biostimulation and radiofrequency therapy). The reviews found that the evidence regarding the benefits of these diverse interventions ranged in quality from low to high. This review included 20 Cochrane systematic reviews that provided evidence (of diverse quality) for non-pharmacological interventions for patients with urinary incontinence. Moderate to high quality of evidence was found favoring the use of pelvic floor muscle training among women with urinary incontinence. To establish solid conclusions for all the other comparisons, further studies of good methodological quality are needed.

  15. MeSH Now: automatic MeSH indexing at PubMed scale via learning to rank.

    PubMed

    Mao, Yuqing; Lu, Zhiyong

    2017-04-17

    MeSH indexing is the task of assigning relevant MeSH terms based on a manual reading of scholarly publications by human indexers. The task is highly important for improving literature retrieval and many other scientific investigations in biomedical research. Unfortunately, given its manual nature, the process of MeSH indexing is both time-consuming (new articles are not immediately indexed until 2 or 3 months later) and costly (approximately ten dollars per article). In response, automatic indexing by computers has been previously proposed and attempted but remains challenging. In order to advance the state of the art in automatic MeSH indexing, a community-wide shared task called BioASQ was recently organized. We propose MeSH Now, an integrated approach that first uses multiple strategies to generate a combined list of candidate MeSH terms for a target article. Through a novel learning-to-rank framework, MeSH Now then ranks the list of candidate terms based on their relevance to the target article. Finally, MeSH Now selects the highest-ranked MeSH terms via a post-processing module. We assessed MeSH Now on two separate benchmarking datasets using traditional precision, recall and F 1 -score metrics. In both evaluations, MeSH Now consistently achieved over 0.60 in F-score, ranging from 0.610 to 0.612. Furthermore, additional experiments show that MeSH Now can be optimized by parallel computing in order to process MEDLINE documents on a large scale. We conclude that MeSH Now is a robust approach with state-of-the-art performance for automatic MeSH indexing and that MeSH Now is capable of processing PubMed scale documents within a reasonable time frame. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/CBBresearch/Lu/Demo/MeSHNow/ .

  16. Down the Block... Around the World...MedlinePlus.gov

    MedlinePlus

    ... Issue Past Issues Down the Block... Around the World...MedlinePlus.gov Past Issues / Spring 2008 Table of ... on. No matter where you are in the world, medlineplus.gov is your best global source for ...

  17. Protocol for a systematic review of psychological interventions for cancer-related fatigue in post-treatment cancer survivors.

    PubMed

    Corbett, Teresa; Devane, Declan; Walsh, Jane C; Groarke, AnnMarie; McGuire, Brian E

    2015-12-04

    Fatigue is a common symptom in cancer patients that can persist beyond the curative treatment phase. Some evidence has been reported for interventions for fatigue during active treatment. However, to date, there is no systematic review on psychological interventions for fatigue after the completion of curative treatment for cancer. This is a protocol for a systematic review that aims to evaluate the effectiveness of psychological interventions for cancer-related fatigue in post-treatment cancer survivors. This systematic review protocol was registered with the International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews (PROSPERO) database. We will search the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL; The Cochrane Library), PubMed, MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, PsycINFO, and relevant sources of grey literature. Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) which have evaluated psychological interventions in adult cancer patients after the completion of treatment, with fatigue as an outcome measure, will be included. Two review authors will independently extract data from the selected studies and assess the methodological quality using the Cochrane Collaboration Risk of Bias Tool. Most existing evidence on cancer-related fatigue is from those in active cancer treatment. This systematic review and meta-analysis will build upon previous evaluations of psychological interventions in people during and after cancer treatment. With the growing need for stage-specific research in cancer, this review seeks to highlight a gap in current practice and to strengthen the evidence base of randomised controlled trials in the area. PROSPERO CRD42014015219.

  18. Temporomandibular disorders in growing patients after treatment of class II and III malocclusion with orthopaedic appliances: a systematic review.

    PubMed

    Jiménez-Silva, Antonio; Carnevali-Arellano, Romano; Venegas-Aguilera, Matías; Tobar-Reyes, Julio; Palomino-Montenegro, Hernán

    2018-05-01

    To determine if the use of orthopaedic appliances in growing patients applied to correct Class II and III malocclusion is related to the development of temporomandibular disorders (TMD). A systematic review was conducted between 1960 and July 2017, based on electronic databases: PubMed, Cochrane Library, Embase, Medline, Scopus, EBSCOhost, Scielo, Lilacs and Bireme. Controlled clinical trials (CCTs) and randomized controlled trials (RCTs) were identified. The articles were selected and analyzed by two authors independently. The quality of the evidence was determined according to the guidelines of the Cochrane Risk Bias Assessment Tool and the Cochrane Quality Study Guide. Seven articles were included, four CCTs and three RCTs. The studies were grouped according to malocclusion treatment in (a) class II appliances (n = 4) and (b) class III appliances (n = 3). The quality of evidence was low due to the high risk of bias, independent of the association reported. All studies concluded that the use of orthopaedic appliances would not contribute to the development of TMD. The quality of evidence available is insufficient to establish definitive conclusions, since the studies were very heterogeneous and presented a high risk of bias. However, it is suggested that the use of orthopaedic appliances to correct class II and III malocclusion in growing patients would not be considered as a risk factor for the development of TMD. High-quality RCTs are required to draw any definitive conclusions.

  19. Ranking the whole MEDLINE database according to a large training set using text indexing.

    PubMed

    Suomela, Brian P; Andrade, Miguel A

    2005-03-24

    The MEDLINE database contains over 12 million references to scientific literature, with about 3/4 of recent articles including an abstract of the publication. Retrieval of entries using queries with keywords is useful for human users that need to obtain small selections. However, particular analyses of the literature or database developments may need the complete ranking of all the references in the MEDLINE database as to their relevance to a topic of interest. This report describes a method that does this ranking using the differences in word content between MEDLINE entries related to a topic and the whole of MEDLINE, in a computational time appropriate for an article search query engine. We tested the capabilities of our system to retrieve MEDLINE references which are relevant to the subject of stem cells. We took advantage of the existing annotation of references with terms from the MeSH hierarchical vocabulary (Medical Subject Headings, developed at the National Library of Medicine). A training set of 81,416 references was constructed by selecting entries annotated with the MeSH term stem cells or some child in its sub tree. Frequencies of all nouns, verbs, and adjectives in the training set were computed and the ratios of word frequencies in the training set to those in the entire MEDLINE were used to score references. Self-consistency of the algorithm, benchmarked with a test set containing the training set and an equal number of references randomly selected from MEDLINE was better using nouns (79%) than adjectives (73%) or verbs (70%). The evaluation of the system with 6,923 references not used for training, containing 204 articles relevant to stem cells according to a human expert, indicated a recall of 65% for a precision of 65%. This strategy appears to be useful for predicting the relevance of MEDLINE references to a given concept. The method is simple and can be used with any user-defined training set. Choice of the part of speech of the words used for

  20. What's New on MedlinePlus: Announcements and Special Features

    MedlinePlus

    ... this page: https://medlineplus.gov/whatsnew.html What's New on MedlinePlus: Announcements and Special Features To use ... features on this page, please enable JavaScript. "What's New" Page Retirement Thank you for your interest in ...

  1. Surgery of the Future | NIH MedlinePlus the Magazine

    MedlinePlus

    ... including tools for imaging the body, biomaterials, and robotics,” says Margot Kern, who led the development of ... Bioengineering (NIBIB) Surgery of the Future website MedlinePlus: Robotic Surgery Summer 2017 Issue: Volume 12 Number 2 ...

  2. A systematic scoping review of the evidence for consumer involvement in organisations undertaking systematic reviews: focus on Cochrane.

    PubMed

    Morley, Richard F; Norman, Gill; Golder, Su; Griffith, Polly

    2016-01-01

    Cochrane is the largest international producer of systematic reviews of clinical trial evidence. We looked for published evidence that reports where consumers (patients and the public) have been involved in Cochrane systematic reviews, and also in reviews published by other organisations.We found 36 studies that reported about consumer involvement either in individual systematic reviews, or in other organisations. The studies showed that consumers were involved in reviews in a range of different ways: coordinating and producing reviews, making reviews more accessible, and spreading the results of reviews ("knowledge transfer"). The most common role was commenting on reviews ("peer reviewing"). Consumers also had other general roles, for example in educating people about evidence or helping other consumers. There were some interesting examples of new ways of involving consumers. The studies showed that most consumers came from rich and English speaking countries. There was little evidence about how consumer involvement had changed the reviews ("impact"). The studies found that consumer involvement needed to be properly supported.In future we believe that more research should be done to understand what kind of consumer involvement has the best impact; that more review authors should report how consumers have been involved; and that consumers who help with reviews should come from more varied backgrounds. Background Cochrane is the largest international producer of systematic reviews, and is committed to consumer involvement in the production and dissemination of its reviews. The review aims to systematically scope the evidence base for consumer involvement in organisations which commission, undertake or support systematic reviews; with an emphasis on Cochrane. Methods In June 2015 we searched six databases and other sources for studies of consumer involvement in organisations which commission, undertake or support systematic reviews, or in individual systematic

  3. Descriptive analysis of cochrane child-relevant systematic reviews: an update and comparison between 2009 and 2013.

    PubMed

    Crick, Katelynn; Thomson, Denise; Fernandes, Ricardo M; Nuspl, Megan; Eurich, Dean T; Rowe, Brian H; Hartling, Lisa

    2017-07-11

    Systematic reviews support health systems and clinical decision-making by identifying and summarizing all existing studies on a particular topic. In 2009, a comprehensive description of child-relevant systematic reviews published in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews was compiled. This study aims to provide an update, and to describe these systematic reviews according to their content and methodological approaches. All child-relevant systematic reviews published by the Cochrane Collaboration in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (CDSR) as of March, 2013 were identified and described in relation to their content and methodological approaches. This step equated to an update of the Child Health Field Review Register (CHFRR). The content of the updated CHFRR was compared to the published 2009 CHFRR description regarding clinical and methodological characteristics, using bivariate analyses. As the Cochrane Collaboration has recognized that disease burden should guide research prioritization, we extracted data from the Global and National Burden of Diseases and Injuries Among Children and Adolescents Between 1990 and 2013 study in order to map the distribution of the burden of disease in child health to the distribution of evidence across Review Groups in the CHFRR. Of the 5,520 potential Cochrane systematic reviews identified, 1,293 (23.4%) were child-relevant (an increase of 24% since 2009). Overall, these reviews included 16,738 primary studies. The most commonly represented Review Groups were Airways (11.5%), Cystic Fibrosis and Genetic Diseases (7.9%), Acute Respiratory Infections (7.8%), Developmental, Psychological and Learning Problems (6.7%), and Infectious Diseases (6.2%). Corresponding authors were most often from Europe (51%), North America (15%), and Australia (15%). The majority of systematic reviews examined pharmacological interventions alone (52% compared to 59% in 2009). Out of 611 reviews that were assessed as up-to-date, GRADE was

  4. BUN (Blood Urea Nitrogen): MedlinePlus Lab Test Information

    MedlinePlus

    ... BUN (Blood Urea Nitrogen) URL of this page: https://medlineplus.gov/labtests/bunbloodureanitrogen.html BUN (Blood Urea ... Jan 30]; 4(2):223–33. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3516645 Mayo ...

  5. Discovering biomedical semantic relations in PubMed queries for information retrieval and database curation

    PubMed Central

    Huang, Chung-Chi; Lu, Zhiyong

    2016-01-01

    Identifying relevant papers from the literature is a common task in biocuration. Most current biomedical literature search systems primarily rely on matching user keywords. Semantic search, on the other hand, seeks to improve search accuracy by understanding the entities and contextual relations in user keywords. However, past research has mostly focused on semantically identifying biological entities (e.g. chemicals, diseases and genes) with little effort on discovering semantic relations. In this work, we aim to discover biomedical semantic relations in PubMed queries in an automated and unsupervised fashion. Specifically, we focus on extracting and understanding the contextual information (or context patterns) that is used by PubMed users to represent semantic relations between entities such as ‘CHEMICAL-1 compared to CHEMICAL-2.’ With the advances in automatic named entity recognition, we first tag entities in PubMed queries and then use tagged entities as knowledge to recognize pattern semantics. More specifically, we transform PubMed queries into context patterns involving participating entities, which are subsequently projected to latent topics via latent semantic analysis (LSA) to avoid the data sparseness and specificity issues. Finally, we mine semantically similar contextual patterns or semantic relations based on LSA topic distributions. Our two separate evaluation experiments of chemical-chemical (CC) and chemical–disease (CD) relations show that the proposed approach significantly outperforms a baseline method, which simply measures pattern semantics by similarity in participating entities. The highest performance achieved by our approach is nearly 0.9 and 0.85 respectively for the CC and CD task when compared against the ground truth in terms of normalized discounted cumulative gain (nDCG), a standard measure of ranking quality. These results suggest that our approach can effectively identify and return related semantic patterns in a ranked

  6. Enabling multi-level relevance feedback on PubMed by integrating rank learning into DBMS.

    PubMed

    Yu, Hwanjo; Kim, Taehoon; Oh, Jinoh; Ko, Ilhwan; Kim, Sungchul; Han, Wook-Shin

    2010-04-16

    Finding relevant articles from PubMed is challenging because it is hard to express the user's specific intention in the given query interface, and a keyword query typically retrieves a large number of results. Researchers have applied machine learning techniques to find relevant articles by ranking the articles according to the learned relevance function. However, the process of learning and ranking is usually done offline without integrated with the keyword queries, and the users have to provide a large amount of training documents to get a reasonable learning accuracy. This paper proposes a novel multi-level relevance feedback system for PubMed, called RefMed, which supports both ad-hoc keyword queries and a multi-level relevance feedback in real time on PubMed. RefMed supports a multi-level relevance feedback by using the RankSVM as the learning method, and thus it achieves higher accuracy with less feedback. RefMed "tightly" integrates the RankSVM into RDBMS to support both keyword queries and the multi-level relevance feedback in real time; the tight coupling of the RankSVM and DBMS substantially improves the processing time. An efficient parameter selection method for the RankSVM is also proposed, which tunes the RankSVM parameter without performing validation. Thereby, RefMed achieves a high learning accuracy in real time without performing a validation process. RefMed is accessible at http://dm.postech.ac.kr/refmed. RefMed is the first multi-level relevance feedback system for PubMed, which achieves a high accuracy with less feedback. It effectively learns an accurate relevance function from the user's feedback and efficiently processes the function to return relevant articles in real time.

  7. The publication echo: effects of retrieving literature in PubMed by year of publication.

    PubMed

    Spreckelsen, Cord; Deserno, Thomas M; Spitzer, Klaus

    2010-04-01

    In PubMed search forms, the publication date refers to both the date of electronic and printed publication. This fact is documented in PubMed, but difficult to anticipate by the users and can provoke misinterpretations of search results. The Technical Note aims at systematically investing the effect (referred to as the publication echo), clarifying onset and extent of the publication echo, and comments on its impact. Papers with ambiguous publication dates are systematically retrieved and a trend analysis with seasonal decomposition on monthly publication data is performed. First doubled search results were found for 1999, their number since then rapidly increasing. Up to 17.6% of all articles of a year are found to be published electronically and in print, which can be before or afterwards. Maximum delay between the two dates is three years, except for one singular publication, where it is five years. Publication trends are exponential and linear when considering echoed and echo-cleaned data, respectively. As a conclusion, we suggest using a query formulation that unambiguously retrieves literature from PubMed by the date of publication. (c) 2010 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

  8. Identification and description of controlled clinical trials published in Spanish Gynaecology and Obstetrics journals and risk of bias assessment of trials on assisted reproductive techniques.

    PubMed

    Gutarra-Vilchez, Rosa B; Pardo-Hernandez, Hector; Arévalo-Rodríguez, Ingrid; Buitrago, Diana; Bonfill, Xavier

    2016-08-01

    To identify and describe controlled clinical trials (CCTs) published in Spanish Gynaecology and Obstetrics journals. In addition, to assess the quality of the CCTs on Assisted Reproduction Techniques (ART) identified in this project. In order to identify eligible CCTs, all Spanish Gynaecology and Obstetrics journals were handsearched. Handsearching was conducted following the guidelines provided by the Cochrane Collaboration, which state that each journal article must be carefully reviewed, including original articles and other types of studies, letters to the editor, abstracts, and conference presentations. The results of the handsearching process were compared with an electronic search conducted in MEDLINE (PubMed). A descriptive analysis of the main characteristics of the identified CCTs was performed, as well as a methodological assessment of CCTs on ART. Sixteen Gynaecology and Obstetrics journals were identified, four of which have been indexed in MEDLINE at some point, although not currently. The journal with the most CCTs was "Progresos de Obstetricia y Ginecología". A total of 235 CCTs were published in these journals, of which 29 were on ART. Most CCTs (216, 91.9%) were carried out in a hospital setting; 201 (89.4%) were unicentric. Obstetrics was the most studied subspecialty (46.4%). Among CCTs on ART, the risk of bias was predominantly high. The number of CCTs published in Spanish Gynaecology and Obstetrics journals is limited. CCTs on ART present deficiencies in the report of results and low methodological quality. It is advised that authors and journals adhere to the CONSORT statement and to the Cochrane Collaboration recommendations to reduce risk of bias when designing and disseminating research projects. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

  9. The Evidence Base for Interventions Delivered to Children in Primary Care: An Overview of Cochrane Systematic Reviews

    PubMed Central

    Gill, Peter J.; Wang, Kay Yee; Mant, David; Hartling, Lisa; Heneghan, Carl; Perera, Rafael; Klassen, Terry; Harnden, Anthony

    2011-01-01

    Background As a first step in developing a framework to evaluate and improve the quality of care of children in primary care there is a need to identify the evidence base underpinning interventions relevant to child health. Our objective was to identify all Cochrane systematic reviews relevant to the management of childhood conditions in primary care and to assess the extent to which Cochrane reviews reflect the burden of childhood illness presenting in primary care. Methodology/Principal Findings We used the Cochrane Child Health Field register of child-relevant systematic reviews to complete an overview of Cochrane reviews related to the management of children in primary care. We compared the proportion of systematic reviews with the proportion of consultations in Australia, US, Dutch and UK general practice in children. We identified 396 relevant systematic reviews; 358 included primary studies on children while 251 undertook a meta-analysis. Most reviews (n = 218, 55%) focused on chronic conditions and over half (n = 216, 57%) evaluated drug interventions. Since 2000, the percentage of pediatric primary care relevant reviews only increased by 2% (7% to 9%) compared to 18% (10% to 28%) in all child relevant reviews. Almost a quarter of reviews (n = 78, 23%) were published on asthma treatments which only account for 3–5% of consultations. Conversely, 15–23% of consultations are due to skin conditions yet they represent only 7% (n = 23) of reviews. Conclusions/Significance Although Cochrane systematic reviews focus on clinical trials and do not provide a comprehensive picture of the evidence base underpinning the management of children in primary care, the mismatch between the focus of the published research and the focus of clinical activity is striking. Clinical trials are an important component of the evidence base and the lack of trial evidence to demonstrate intervention effectiveness in substantial areas of primary care for children

  10. Systematic review of health literacy in Cochrane database studies on paediatric asthma educational interventions: searching beyond rigorous design.

    PubMed

    Zeni, Mary Beth

    2012-03-01

    The purpose of this study was to evaluate if paediatric asthma educational intervention studies included in the Cochrane Collaboration database incorporated concepts of health literacy. Inclusion criteria were established to identify review categories in the Cochrane Collaboration database specific to paediatric asthma educational interventions. Articles that met the inclusion criteria were selected from the Cochrane Collaboration database in 2010. The health literacy definition from Healthy People 2010 was used to develop a 4-point a priori rating scale to determine the extent a study reported aspects of health literacy in the development of an educational intervention for parents and/or children. Five Cochrane review categories met the inclusion criteria; 75 studies were rated for health literacy content regarding educational interventions with families and children living with asthma. A priori criteria were used for the rating process. While 52 (69%) studies had no information pertaining to health literacy, 23 (31%) reported an aspect of health literacy. Although all studies maintained the rigorous standards of randomized clinical trials, a model of health literacy was not reported regarding the design and implementation of interventions. While a more comprehensive health literacy model for the development of educational interventions with families and children may have been available after the reviewed studies were conducted, general literacy levels still could have been addressed. The findings indicate a need to incorporate health literacy in the design of client-centred educational interventions and in the selection criteria of relevant Cochrane reviews. Inclusion assures that health literacy is as important as randomization and statistical analyses in the research design of educational interventions and may even assure participation of people with literacy challenges. © 2012 The Author. International Journal of Evidence-Based Healthcare © 2012 The Joanna

  11. Married...with Food Allergies | NIH MedlinePlus the Magazine

    MedlinePlus

    ... of this page please turn Javascript on. Feature: Food Allergies Married...with Food Allergies Past Issues / Spring 2011 Table of Contents ... married life together and a common problem—severe food allergies. NIH MedlinePlus magazine’s Naomi Miller caught up ...

  12. Outrunning Asthma - Rashad Jennings | NIH MedlinePlus the Magazine

    MedlinePlus

    ... More MedlinePlus: Asthma National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute NIBIB-Supported Study NHALES Study Allergy and Asthma Foundation of America Fall 2017 Issue: Volume 12 Number ...

  13. Writing a Cochrane systematic review on preventive interventions to improve safety: the case of the construction industry.

    PubMed

    van der Molen, H F; Hoonakker, P L T; Lehtola, Marika M; Hsiao, H; Haslam, R A; Hale, A R; Verbeek, J H

    2009-01-01

    The objective of this paper is to describe the main steps and to conduct a systematic literature review on preventive interventions concerning work-related injuries and to illustrate the process. Based on the Cochrane handbook, a structured framework of six steps was outlined for the development of a systematic review. This framework was used to describe a Cochrane systematic review (CSR) on the effectiveness of interventions to prevent work related injuries in the construction industry. The 6 main steps to write a CSR were: formulating the problem and objectives; locating and selecting studies; assessing study quality; collecting data; analysing data and presenting results; and interpreting results. The CSR on preventing injuries in the construction industry yielded five eligible intervention studies. Re-analysis of original injury data of the studies on regulatory interventions, through correcting for pre-intervention injury trends led to different conclusions about the effectiveness of interventions than those reported in the original studies. The Cochrane handbook for systematic reviews of interventions provides a practical and feasible six-step framework for developing and reporting a systematic review for preventive interventions.

  14. Picture perfect: benefits and risk of fetal 3D ultrasound.

    PubMed

    Wiseman, Claudia S; Kiehl, Ermalynn M

    2007-01-01

    The purpose of this literature review was to survey available information and research related to routine three-dimensional (3D) ultrasound technology in obstetrics, with an emphasis on current medical uses, safety, and availability issues. Several data bases, including Cochrane, WHO, NIH, CINALH, Blackwell Synergy, ERIC, PubMed, and Medline, were used along with information from Internet search engines. Although fetal 3D ultrasound is used in both medical and commercial settings, recent studies focus on its possible uses rather than the more difficult issues of safety and commercial applications. Professional organizations associated with ultrasound technology support limiting ultrasounds in pregnancy to medically necessary events, whereas commercial venues use "direct to consumer" marketing to promote this technology as a way to "see" the baby before it is born. How safe is routine or frequent use of 3D ultrasound? Further research is needed to address these important questions.

  15. Disorders of the long head of the biceps: tenotomy versus tenodesis.

    PubMed

    Ribeiro, Fabiano Rebouças; Ursolino, André Petry Sandoval; Ramos, Vinicius Ferreira Lima; Takesian, Fernando Hovaguim; Tenor Júnior, Antonio Carlos; Costa, Miguel Pereira da

    2017-01-01

    Disorders of the long head of biceps tendon are common in clinical practice. Their causes could be degenerative, inflammatory, instability (subluxation or luxation) or traumatic. They are generally associated to other diseases of the shoulder, mainly rotator cuff injuries. Currently, there is controversy in the literature regarding the indications for surgical treatment and the choice of the best technique for each case, due to the possibility of esthetic deformity, loss of muscle strength, and residual pain. The objective of this study was to identify the indications for surgical treatment, the best surgical technique, and the advantages and disadvantages of each technique described in the orthopedic literature for the treatment of long head of biceps tendon injuries. A revision of the orthopedic medical literature on the following databases: Biblioteca Regional de Medicina (BIREME), Medline, PubMed, Cochrane Library and Google Scholar, comprising articles published in the period from 1991 to 2015.

  16. Stress, Psychosocial Mediators, and Cognitive Mediators in Parents of Child Cancer Patients and Cancer Survivors: Attention and Working Memory Pathway Perspectives.

    PubMed

    Vander Haegen, Marie; Luminet, Olivier

    2015-01-01

    This review examines stress and its consequences on attention and working memory, stress symptoms in parents of child cancer patients and survivors and long-term consequences of stress on cognitive processing in parents of child cancer survivors. Eligible studies were experimental, meta-analyses, and qualitative (2000-2013) from Pubmed, Medline, the Cochrane Library, PsycArticles, and Google Scholar. We identified 92 eligible papers. They showed that elevated stress can impede performances on tasks requiring attention and memory patterns. In pediatric oncology, parental stress increased shortly after diagnosis involving depression and anxiety. Consequences of stress on cognitive performances were observed mainly among depressed individuals. As regards parents of child cancer survivors, female gender, low Socioeconomic Status (SES), and innate traits of anxiety/anger predicted the development of PTSS. Evidence of stress on attention and working memory processes in parents of child cancer survivors is insufficiently developed.

  17. [Ethical problems experienced by nurses in primary health care: integrative literature review].

    PubMed

    Nora, Carlise Rigon Dalla; Zoboli, Elma Lourdes Campos Pavone; Vieira, Margarida

    2015-03-01

    The aim of this study is to identify ethical problems experienced by nurses in primary health care and resources for coping based on publications on the subject. An integrative literature review was performed between the months of October and November 2013, using the databases: BDTD, CINAHL, LILACS, MEDLINE, Biblioteca Cochrane, PubMed, RCAAP and SciELO. Articles, dissertations and theses published in Portuguese, English and Spanish were included, totalling 31 studies published from 1992 to 2013. This analysis resulted in four categories: ethical problems in the relationship between team members, ethical problems in the relationship with the user, ethical problems in health services management and resources for coping with ethical problems. Results showed that nurses need to be prepared to face ethical problems, emphasizing the importance of ethics education during the education process before and during professional practice to enhance the development of ethical sensitivity and competence for problem resolution.

  18. Effectiveness of Traditional Chinese Acupuncture versus Sham Acupuncture: a Systematic Review

    PubMed Central

    Carlos, Luís; da Cruz, Lóris Aparecida Prado; Leopoldo, Vanessa Cristina; de Campos, Fabrício Ribeiro; de Almeida, Ana Maria; Silveira, Renata Cristina de Campos Pereira

    2016-01-01

    ABSTRACT Objective: to identify and synthesize the evidence from randomized clinical trials that tested the effectiveness of traditional Chinese acupuncture in relation to sham acupuncture for the treatment of hot flashes in menopausal women with breast cancer. Method: systematic review guided by the recommendations of the Cochrane Collaboration. Citations were searched in the following databases: MEDLINE via PubMed, Web of Science, CENTRAL, CINAHL, and LILACS. A combination of the following keywords was used: breast neoplasm, acupuncture, acupuncture therapy, acupuncture points, placebos, sham treatment, hot flashes, hot flushes, menopause, climacteric, and vasomotor symptoms. Results: a total of 272 studies were identified, five of which were selected and analyzed. Slight superiority of traditional acupuncture compared with sham acupuncture was observed; however, there were no strong statistical associations. Conclusions: the evidence gathered was not sufficient to affirm the effectiveness of traditional acupuncture compared with sham acupuncture. PMID:27533271

  19. Exploring an increased role for Australian community pharmacy in mental health professional service delivery: evaluation of the literature.

    PubMed

    Hattingh, H Laetitia; Scahill, Shane; Fowler, Jane L; Wheeler, Amanda J

    2016-12-01

    Australian general practitioners primarily treat mental health problems by prescribing medication dispensed by community pharmacists. Pharmacists therefore have regular interactions with mental health consumers and carers. This narrative review explored the potential role of community pharmacy in mental health services. Medline, CINAHL, ProQuest, Emerald, PsycINFO, Science Direct, PubMed, Web of Knowledge and IPA were utilised. The Cochrane Library as well as grey literature and "lay" search engines such as GoogleScholar were also searched. Four systematic reviews and ten community pharmacy randomised controlled trials were identified. Various relevant reviews outlining the impact of community pharmacy based disease state or medicines management services were also identified. International studies involving professional service interventions for mental health consumers could be contextualised for the Australian setting. Australian studies of pharmacy professional services for chronic physical health conditions provided further guidance for the expansion of community pharmacy mental health professional services.

  20. The effectiveness of hydrotherapy in the management of fibromyalgia syndrome: a systematic review.

    PubMed

    McVeigh, Joseph G; McGaughey, Helen; Hall, Melissa; Kane, Patricia

    2008-12-01

    Hydrotherapy is often used in the treatment of fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS), however there has been limited evaluation of its effectiveness. The aim of this systematic review was therefore to examine the effectiveness of hydrotherapy in the management of FMS. AMED, BNI, CINAHL, The Cochrane Library, EMBASE, MEDLINE, ProQuest, PubMed, Science Direct and Web of Science were searched (1990-July 2006). Key words used 'fibromyalgia' and 'hydrotherapy', 'balneotherapy', 'aqua therapy', 'pool therapy', 'water therapy', 'swimming', 'hydrogalvanic', 'spa therapy', 'physiotherapy', 'physical therapy' and 'rehabilitation'. Searches were supplemented with hand searches of selected journals. Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) were assessed for methodological quality using the van Tulder scale. Ten RCTs met the inclusion criteria. Mean methodological quality was 4.5/9 on the van Tulder scale. Positive outcomes were reported for pain, health-status and tender point count. There is strong evidence for the use of hydrotherapy in the management of FMS.

  1. Pharmaceutical applications and phytochemical profile of Cinnamomum burmannii

    PubMed Central

    Al-Dhubiab, Bandar E.

    2012-01-01

    Extensive studies have been carried out in the last decade to assess the pharmaceutical potential and screen the phytochemical constituents of Cinnamomum burmannii. Databases such as PubMed (MEDLINE), Science Direct (Embase, Biobase, biosis), Scopus, Scifinder, Google Scholar, Google Patent, Cochrane database, and web of science were searched using a defined search strategy. This plant is a member of the genus Cinnamomum and is traditionally used as a spice. Cinnamomum burmannii have been demonstrated to exhibit analgesic, antibacterial, anti-diabetic, anti-fungal, antioxidant, antirheumatic, anti-thrombotic, and anti-tumor activities. The chemical constituents are mostly cinnamyl alcohol, coumarin, cinnamic acid, cinnamaldehyde, anthocynin, and essential oils together with constituents of sugar, protein, crude fats, pectin, and others. This review presents an overview of the current status and knowledge on the traditional usage, the pharmaceutical, biological activities, and phytochemical constituents reported for C. burmannii. PMID:23055638

  2. Systematic Evaluation of Promising Clinical Trials-Gene Silencing for the Treatment of Glioblastoma.

    PubMed

    Karaarslan, Numan; Yilmaz, Ibrahim; Ozbek, Hanefi; Caliskan, Tezcan; Topuk, Savas; Sirin, Duygu Yasar; Ates, Ozkan

    2018-04-06

    The aim of this study was to systematically investigate the role of artificial small interfering RNA (siRNA) molecules in glioblastoma treatment and to give a detailed overview of the literature concerning studies performed in this field worldwide in the last 31 years. Articles about clinical trials conducted between December 1, 1949 and November 8, 2017, were identified from the Cochrane Collaboration, the Cochrane Library, Ovid MEDLINE, ProQuest, the National Library of Medicine, and PubMed electronic databases, using the terms "post transcriptional gene silencing," "small interfering RNA," "siRNA," and "glioblastoma," either individually or combined (\\"OR\\" and \\"AND"), without language and country restrictions. Articles that met the examination criteria were included in the study. After descriptive statistical evaluation, the results were reported in frequency (%). After scanning 2.752 articles, five articles were found that met the research criteria. Examination of full texts of the five identified articles provided no sufficient evidence for research conducted with regard to the use of gene silencing via siRNAs in glioblastoma treatment. To be able to evaluate the clinical use of siRNAs, there is an urgent need for in-vivo studies and for trials with randomized, controlled, and clinical designs that provide long-term functional outcomes.

  3. The Physiological and Biochemical Outcomes Associated with a Reflexology Treatment: A Systematic Review

    PubMed Central

    McCullough, J. E. M.; Liddle, S. D.; Sinclair, M.; Close, C.; Hughes, C. M.

    2014-01-01

    Background. Reflexology is one of the top forms of complementary and alternative medicine in the UK and is used for healthcare by a diverse range of people. However, it is offered by few healthcare providers as little scientific evidence is available explaining how it works or any health benefits it may confer. The aim of this review was to assess the current evidence available from reflexology randomised controlled trials (RCTs) that have investigated changes in physiological or biochemical outcomes. Methods. Guidelines from the Cochrane Handbook of Systematic Reviews of Interventions were followed: the following databases were searched from inception to December 2013: AMED, CAM Quest, CINAHL Plus, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, Embase, Medline Ovid, Proquest, and Pubmed. Risk of bias was assessed independently by two members of the review team and overall strength of the evidence was assessed using the Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development, and Evaluation guidelines. Results. Seventeen eligible RCTs met all inclusion criteria. A total of 34 objective outcome measures were analysed. Although twelve studies showed significant changes within the reflexology group, only three studies investigating blood pressure, cardiac index, and salivary amylase resulted in significant between group changes in favour of reflexology. The overall quality of the studies was low. PMID:24883067

  4. Dietary intake and diabetic retinopathy: A systematic review

    PubMed Central

    Wong, Mark Y. Z.; Man, Ryan E. K.; Fenwick, Eva K.; Gupta, Preeti; Li, Ling-Jun; van Dam, Rob M.; Chong, Mary F.

    2018-01-01

    Introduction The evidence linking dietary intake with diabetic retinopathy (DR) is growing but unclear. We conducted a systematic review of the association between dietary intake and DR. Methods We systematically searched PubMed, Embase, Medline, and the Cochrane Central register of controlled trials, for publications between January 1967 and January 2017 using standardized criteria for diet and DR. Interventional and observational studies investigating micro- and macro-nutrient intakes; food and beverage consumptions; and dietary patterns were included. Study quality was evaluated using a modified Newcastle-Ottawa scale for observational studies, and the Cochrane collaboration tool for interventional studies. Results Of 4265 titles initially identified, 31 studies (3 interventional, 28 Observational) were retained. Higher intakes of dietary fibre, oily fish, and greater adherence to a Mediterranean diet were protective of DR. Conversely, high total caloric intake was associated with higher risk of DR. No significant associations of carbohydrate, vitamin D, and sodium intake with DR were found. Associations of antioxidants, fatty acids, proteins and alcohol with DR remain equivocal. Conclusions Dietary fibre, oily fish, a Mediterranean diet and a reduced caloric intake are associated with lower risk of DR. Longitudinal data and interventional models are warranted to confirm our findings and better inform clinical guidelines. PMID:29324740

  5. Safety of ceftriaxone in paediatrics: a systematic review protocol.

    PubMed

    Zeng, Linan; Choonara, Imti; Zhang, Lingli; Xue, Song; Chen, Zhe; He, Miaomiao

    2017-08-21

    Ceftriaxone is widely used in children in the treatment of sepsis. However, concerns have been raised about the safety of ceftriaxone, especially in young children. The aim of this review is to systematically evaluate the safety of ceftriaxone in children of all age groups. MEDLINE, PubMed, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, EMBASE, CINAHL, International Pharmaceutical Abstracts and adverse drug reaction (ADR) monitoring systems will be systematically searched for randomised controlled trials (RCTs), cohort studies, case-control studies, cross-sectional studies, case series and case reports evaluating the safety of ceftriaxone in children. The Cochrane risk of bias tool, Newcastle-Ottawa and quality assessment tools developed by the National Institutes of Health will be used for quality assessment. Meta-analysis of the incidence of ADRs from RCTs and prospective studies will be done. Subgroup analyses will be performed for age and dosage regimen. Formal ethical approval is not required as no primary data are collected. This systematic review will be disseminated through a peer-reviewed publication and at conference meetings. CRD42017055428. © Article author(s) (or their employer(s) unless otherwise stated in the text of the article) 2017. All rights reserved. No commercial use is permitted unless otherwise expressly granted.

  6. Describing methods and interventions: a protocol for the systematic analysis of the perioperative quality improvement literature.

    PubMed

    Jones, Emma; Lees, Nicholas; Martin, Graham; Dixon-Woods, Mary

    2014-09-05

    Quality improvement (QI) methods are widely used in surgery in an effort to improve care, often using techniques such as Plan-Do-Study-Act cycles to implement specific interventions. Explicit definition of both the QI method and quality intervention is necessary to enable the accurate replication of effective interventions in practice, facilitate cumulative learning, reduce research waste and optimise benefits to patients. This systematic review aims to assess quality of reporting of QI methods and quality interventions in perioperative care. Studies reporting on quality interventions implemented in perioperative care settings will be identified. Searches will be conducted in the Ovid SP version of Medline, Scopus, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, the Cochrane Effective Practice and Organisation of Care database and the related articles function of PubMed. The journal BMJ Quality will be searched separately. Search strategy terms will relate to (i) surgery, (ii) QI and (iii) evaluation methods. Explicit exclusion and inclusion criteria will be applied. Data from studies will be extracted using a data extraction form. The Template for Intervention Description and Replication (TIDieR) checklist will be used to evaluate quality of reporting, together with additional items aimed at assessing QI methods specifically. PROSPERO http://CRD42014012845.

  7. Outcomes of physical therapy, speech pathology, and occupational therapy for people with motor neuron disease: a systematic review.

    PubMed

    Morris, Meg E; Perry, Alison; Bilney, Belinda; Curran, Andrea; Dodd, Karen; Wittwer, Joanne E; Dalton, Gregory W

    2006-09-01

    This article describes a systematic review and critical evaluation of the international literature on the effects of physical therapy, speech pathology, and occupational therapy for people with motor neuron disease (PwMND). The results were interpreted using the framework of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health. This enabled us to summarize therapy outcomes at the level of body structure and function, activity limitations, participation restrictions, and quality of life. Databases searched included MEDLINE, PUBMED, CINAHL, PSYCInfo, Data base of Abstracts of Reviews of Effectiveness (DARE), The Physiotherapy Evidence data base (PEDro), Evidence Based Medicine Reviews (EMBASE), the Cochrane database of systematic reviews, and the Cochrane Controlled Trials Register. Evidence was graded according to the Harbour and Miller classification. Most of the evidence was found to be at the level of "clinical opinion" rather than of controlled clinical trials. Several nonrandomized small group and "observational studies" provided low-level evidence to support physical therapy for improving muscle strength and pulmonary function. There was also some evidence to support the effectiveness of speech pathology interventions for dysarthria. The search identified a small number of studies on occupational therapy for PwMND, which were small, noncontrolled pre-post-designs or clinical reports.

  8. A Systematic Review of Perioperative Versus Prophylactic Antibiotics for Cochlear Implantation.

    PubMed

    Anne, Samantha; Ishman, Stacey L; Schwartz, Seth

    2016-11-01

    Previous Cochrane review of prophylactic antibiotic use in clean and clean-contaminated ear surgery showed no benefit; however, these studies did not address cochlear implant (CI) surgery specifically. Systematically review effects of perioperative antibiotics on risk of infections and related complications in CI surgery SEARCH METHODS: PubMed, EMBASE, Medline, CINAHL, and Cochrane library were searched from inception to March 2015. Manual searches of bibliographies were also completed. We included all studies that describe perioperative antibiotic use in CI surgery. Outcome measures included infection, meningitis, implant extrusion, and adverse antibiotics effects. Two independent evaluators reviewed each abstract and article. One hundred and seventy-three studies were identified in search. Three met inclusion criteria and were reviewed. Articles were low quality; no randomized trials were identified. For included studies, numerous antibiotic types and dosing regimens were used. Recorded outcome measures were heterogeneous, and detailed information was frequently unavailable. Overall infection rate was low (3%-4.5%); single dose antibiotic prophylaxis showed low rate of complications (1%) in 2 studies. There is insufficient evidence to make definitive conclusions about the role of perioperative antibiotics in CI surgery. Reported infection rates are low; however, decision to use antibiotics should be based on assessment of risks and benefits to each patient. © The Author(s) 2016.

  9. Wenxin Keli for atrial fibrillation

    PubMed Central

    He, Zhuogen; Zheng, Minan; Xie, Pingchang; Wang, Yuanping; Yan, Xia; Deng, Dingwei

    2018-01-01

    Abstract Background: Atrial fibrillation (AF) is a most common cardiac arrhythmia in clinical practice. In China, Wenxin Keli (WXKL) therapy is a common treatment for AF, but its effects and safety remain uncertain. This protocol is to provide the methods used to assess the effectiveness and safety of WXKL for the treatment of patients with AF. Methods: We will search comprehensively the 4 English databases EMBASE, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (Cochrane Library), PubMed, and Medline and 3 Chinese databases China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), Chinese Biomedical Literature Database (CBM), and Chinese Science and Technology Periodical database (VIP) on computer on March 2018 for the randomized controlled trials (RCTs) regarding WXKL for AF. The therapeutic effects according to the sinus rhythm and p-wave dispersion (Pwd) will be accepted as the primary outcomes. We will use RevMan V.5.3 software as well to compute the data synthesis carefully when a meta-analysis is allowed. Results: This study will provide a high-quality synthesis of current evidence of WXKL for AF. Conclusion: The conclusion of our systematic review will provide evidence to judge whether WXKL is an effective intervention for patient with AF. PROSPERO registration number: PROSPERO CRD 42018082045. PMID:29702984

  10. The efficacy of topical and oral ivermectin in the treatment of human scabies.

    PubMed

    Panahi, Yunes; Poursaleh, Zohreh; Goldust, Mohamad

    2015-01-01

    Scabies is an itchy skin condition caused by the microscopic mite Sarcoptes scabei. The itching is caused by an allergic reaction to the mites. The treatment of choice is still controversial. It is commonly treated with topical insecticides. The aim of this study was to assess the efficacy of topical and oral ivermectin in the treatment of human scabies. We searched electronic databases (Cochrane Occupational Safety and Health Review Group Specialised Register, CENTRAL (The Cochrane Library), MEDLINE (Ovid), Pubmed, EMBASE, LILACS, CINAHL, Open Grey and WHO ICTRP) up to September 2014. Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) or cluster RCTs which compared the efficacy of ivermectin with other medications in the treatment of scabies. Interventions could be compared to each other, or to placebo or to no treatment. The author intended to extract dichotomous data (developed infection or did not develop infection) for the effects of interventions. We intended to report any adverse outcomes similarly. It has been sated that ivermectin was as effective as permethrin in the treatment of scabies. In comparison to other medications such as lindane, benzyl benzoate, crotamiton and malathion, ivermectin was more effective in the treatment of scabies. Ivermectin is an effective and cost-comparable alternative to topical agents in the treatment of scabies infection.

  11. New approach to managing genital warts

    PubMed Central

    Lopaschuk, Catharine C.

    2013-01-01

    Abstract Objective To summarize and determine the appropriate use for the new and old management tools for genital warts. Sources of information The following databases were searched: MEDLINE, PubMed, EMBASE, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, ACP Journal Club, and Trip. The bibliographies of retrieved papers were also reviewed. Clinical trials, qualitative review articles, consensus reports, and clinical practice guidelines were retrieved. Main message Symptomatic warts are prevalent in at least 1% of the population between the ages of 15 and 49, with estimates of up to 50% of the population being infected with human papillomavirus at some point in their lifetime. Imiquimod and podophyllotoxin are 2 new treatments for external genital warts that are less painful and can be applied by patients at home. In addition, the quadrivalent human papillomavirus vaccine has been shown to be efficacious in preventing genital warts and cervical cancer. There is still a role for the older treatment methods in certain situations, such as intravaginal, urethral, anal, or recalcitrant warts; or for pregnant patients. Conclusion The new treatments of external genital warts can reduce the pain of treatment and the number of office visits. Other treatment methods are still useful in certain situations. PMID:23851535

  12. Intelligent system for topic survey in MEDLINE by keyword recommendation and learning text characteristics.

    PubMed

    Tanaka, M; Nakazono, S; Matsuno, H; Tsujimoto, H; Kitamura, Y; Miyano, S

    2000-01-01

    We have implemented a system for assisting experts in selecting MEDLINE records for database construction purposes. This system has two specific features: The first is a learning mechanism which extracts characteristics in the abstracts of MEDLINE records of interest as patterns. These patterns reflect selection decisions by experts and are used for screening the records. The second is a keyword recommendation system which assists and supplements experts' knowledge in unexpected cases. Combined with a conventional keyword-based information retrieval system, this system may provide an efficient and comfortable environment for MEDLINE record selection by experts. Some computational experiments are provided to prove that this idea is useful.

  13. Enabling multi-level relevance feedback on PubMed by integrating rank learning into DBMS

    PubMed Central

    2010-01-01

    Background Finding relevant articles from PubMed is challenging because it is hard to express the user's specific intention in the given query interface, and a keyword query typically retrieves a large number of results. Researchers have applied machine learning techniques to find relevant articles by ranking the articles according to the learned relevance function. However, the process of learning and ranking is usually done offline without integrated with the keyword queries, and the users have to provide a large amount of training documents to get a reasonable learning accuracy. This paper proposes a novel multi-level relevance feedback system for PubMed, called RefMed, which supports both ad-hoc keyword queries and a multi-level relevance feedback in real time on PubMed. Results RefMed supports a multi-level relevance feedback by using the RankSVM as the learning method, and thus it achieves higher accuracy with less feedback. RefMed "tightly" integrates the RankSVM into RDBMS to support both keyword queries and the multi-level relevance feedback in real time; the tight coupling of the RankSVM and DBMS substantially improves the processing time. An efficient parameter selection method for the RankSVM is also proposed, which tunes the RankSVM parameter without performing validation. Thereby, RefMed achieves a high learning accuracy in real time without performing a validation process. RefMed is accessible at http://dm.postech.ac.kr/refmed. Conclusions RefMed is the first multi-level relevance feedback system for PubMed, which achieves a high accuracy with less feedback. It effectively learns an accurate relevance function from the user’s feedback and efficiently processes the function to return relevant articles in real time. PMID:20406504

  14. Indexing of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies in MEDLINE and EMBASE

    PubMed Central

    Wilczynski, Nancy L.; Haynes, R. Brian

    2007-01-01

    Background: STAndards for Reporting of Diagnostic Accuracy (STARD) were published in 2003 and endorsed by some journals but not others. Objective: To determine whether the quality of indexing of diagnostic accuracy studies in MEDLINE and EMBASE has improved since the STARD statement was published. Design: Evaluate the change in the mean number of “accurate index terms” assigned to diagnostic accuracy studies, comparing STARD (endorsing) and non-STARD (non-endorsing) journals, for 2 years before and after STARD publication. Results: In MEDLINE, no differences in indexing quality were found for STARD and non-STARD journals before or after the STARD statement was published in 2003. In EMBASE, indexing in STARD journals improved compared with non-STARD journals (p = 0.02). However, articles in STARD journals had half the number of accurate indexing terms as articles in non-STARD journals, both before and after STARD statement publication (p < 0.001). PMID:18693947

  15. Indexing of diagnosis accuracy studies in MEDLINE and EMBASE.

    PubMed

    Wilczynski, Nancy L; Haynes, R Brian

    2007-10-11

    STAndards for Reporting of Diagnostic Accuracy (STARD) were published in 2003 and endorsed by some journals but not others. To determine whether the quality of indexing of diagnostic accuracy studies in MEDLINE and EMBASE has improved since the STARD statement was published. Evaluate the change in the mean number of "accurate index terms" assigned to diagnostic accuracy studies, comparing STARD (endorsing) and non-STARD (non-endorsing) journals, for 2 years before and after STARD publication. In MEDLINE, no differences in indexing quality were found for STARD and non-STARD journals before or after the STARD statement was published in 2003. In EMBASE, indexing in STARD journals improved compared with non-STARD journals (p = 0.02). However, articles in STARD journals had half the number of accurate indexing terms as articles in non-STARD journals, both before and after STARD statement publication (p < 0.001).

  16. Back schools for nonspecific low back pain: a systematic review within the framework of the Cochrane Collaboration Back Review Group.

    PubMed

    Heymans, M W; van Tulder, M W; Esmail, R; Bombardier, C; Koes, B W

    2005-10-01

    A systematic review within the Cochrane Collaboration Back Review Group. To assess the effectiveness of back schools for patients with nonspecific low back pain (LBP). Since the introduction of the Swedish back school in 1969, back schools have frequently been used for treating patients with LBP. However, the content of back schools has changed and appears to vary widely today. We searched the MEDLINE and EMBASE databases and the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials to November 2004 for relevant trials reported in English, Dutch, French, or German. We also screened references from relevant reviews and included trials. Randomized controlled trials that reported on any type of back school for nonspecific LBP were included. Four reviewers, blinded to authors, institution, and journal, independently extracted the data and assessed the quality of the trials. We set the high-quality level, a priori, at a trial meeting six or more of 11 internal validity criteria. Because data were clinically and statistically too heterogeneous to perform a meta-analysis, we used a qualitative review (best evidence synthesis) to summarize the results. The evidence was classified into four levels (strong, moderate, limited, or no evidence), taking into account the methodologic quality of the studies. We also evaluated the clinical relevance of the studies. Nineteen randomized controlled trials (3,584 patients) were included in this updated review. Overall, the methodologic quality was low, with only six trials considered to be high-quality. It was not possible to perform relevant subgroup analyses for LBP with radiation versus LBP without radiation. The results indicate that there is moderate evidence suggesting that back schools have better short- and intermediate-term effects on pain and functional status than other treatments for patients with recurrent and chronic LBP. There is moderate evidence suggesting that back schools for chronic LBP in an occupational setting are more

  17. Interventions for the prevention of OHSS in ART cycles: an overview of Cochrane reviews.

    PubMed

    Mourad, Selma; Brown, Julie; Farquhar, Cindy

    2017-01-23

    Ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (OHSS) in assisted reproductive technology (ART) cycles is a treatment-induced disease that has an estimated prevalence of 20% to 33% in its mild form and 3% to 8% in its moderate or severe form. These numbers might even be higher for high-risk women such as those with polycystic ovaries or a high oocyte yield from ovum pickup. The objective of this overview is to identify and summarise all evidence from Cochrane systematic reviews on interventions for prevention or treatment of moderate, severe and overall OHSS in couples with subfertility who are undergoing ART cycles. Published Cochrane systematic reviews reporting on moderate, severe or overall OHSS as an outcome in ART cycles were eligible for inclusion in this overview. We also identified Cochrane submitted protocols and title registrations for future inclusion in the overview. The evidence is current to 12 December 2016. We identified reviews, protocols and titles by searching the Cochrane Gynaecology and Fertility Group Database of Systematic Reviews and Archie (the Cochrane information management system) in July 2016 on the effectiveness of interventions for outcomes of moderate, severe and overall OHSS. We undertook in duplicate selection of systematic reviews, data extraction and quality assessment. We used the AMSTAR (Assessing the Methodological Quality of Systematic Reviews) tool to assess the quality of included reviews, and we used GRADE methods to assess the quality of the evidence for each outcome. We summarised the characteristics of included reviews in the text and in additional tables. We included a total of 27 reviews in this overview. The reviews were generally of high quality according to AMSTAR ratings, and included studies provided evidence that ranged from very low to high in quality. Ten reviews had not been updated in the past three years. Seven reviews described interventions that provided a beneficial effect in reducing OHSS rates, and we categorised

  18. Surgery for post-vitrectomy cataract

    PubMed Central

    Do, Diana V; Gichuhi, Stephen; Vedula, Satyanarayana S; Hawkins, Barbara S

    2014-01-01

    Background Cataract formation or acceleration can occur after intraocular surgery, especially following vitrectomy, a surgical technique for removing the vitreous which is used in the treatment of disorders that affect the posterior segment of the eye. The underlying problem that led to vitrectomy may limit the benefit from cataract surgery. Objectives The objective of this review was to evaluate the effectiveness and safety of surgery for post-vitrectomy cataract with respect to visual acuity, quality of life, and other outcomes. Search methods We searched CENTRAL (which contains the Cochrane Eyes and Vision Group Trials Register) (The Cochrane Library 2013, Issue 4), Ovid MEDLINE, Ovid MEDLINE in-Process and Other Non-Indexed Citations, Ovid MEDLINE Daily Update, Ovid OLDMED-LINE (January 1946 to May 2013), EMBASE (January 1980 to May 2013, Latin American and Caribbean Health Sciences Literature Database (LILACS) (January 1982 to May 2013), PubMed (January 1946 to May 2013), the metaRegister of Controlled Trials (mRCT) (www.controlled-trials.com), ClinicalTrials.gov (www.clinicaltrial.gov) and the WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP) (www.who.int/ictrp/search/en). We did not use any date or language restrictions in the electronic searches for trials. We last searched the electronic databases on 22 May 2013. Selection criteria We planned to include randomized and quasi-randomized controlled trials comparing cataract surgery with no surgery in adult patients who developed cataract following vitrectomy. Data collection and analysis Two authors screened the search results independently according to the standard methodological procedures expected by The Cochrane Collaboration. Main results We found no randomized or quasi-randomized controlled trials comparing cataract surgery with no cataract surgery for patients who developed cataracts following vitrectomy surgery. Authors' conclusions There is no evidence from randomized or quasi

  19. PubMed and beyond: a survey of web tools for searching biomedical literature

    PubMed Central

    Lu, Zhiyong

    2011-01-01

    The past decade has witnessed the modern advances of high-throughput technology and rapid growth of research capacity in producing large-scale biological data, both of which were concomitant with an exponential growth of biomedical literature. This wealth of scholarly knowledge is of significant importance for researchers in making scientific discoveries and healthcare professionals in managing health-related matters. However, the acquisition of such information is becoming increasingly difficult due to its large volume and rapid growth. In response, the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) is continuously making changes to its PubMed Web service for improvement. Meanwhile, different entities have devoted themselves to developing Web tools for helping users quickly and efficiently search and retrieve relevant publications. These practices, together with maturity in the field of text mining, have led to an increase in the number and quality of various Web tools that provide comparable literature search service to PubMed. In this study, we review 28 such tools, highlight their respective innovations, compare them to the PubMed system and one another, and discuss directions for future development. Furthermore, we have built a website dedicated to tracking existing systems and future advances in the field of biomedical literature search. Taken together, our work serves information seekers in choosing tools for their needs and service providers and developers in keeping current in the field. Database URL: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/CBBresearch/Lu/search PMID:21245076

  20. Performances of 27 MEDLINE systems tested by searches with clinical questions.

    PubMed Central

    Haynes, R B; Walker, C J; McKibbon, K A; Johnston, M E; Willan, A R

    1994-01-01

    OBJECTIVE: To compare the performances of online and compact-disc (CD-ROM) versions of the National Library of Medicine's (NLM) MEDLINE database. DESIGN: Analytic survey. INTERVENTION: Clinical questions were drawn from 18 searches originally conducted spontaneously by clinicians from wards and clinics who had used Grateful Med Version 4.0. Clinicians' search strategies were translated to meet the specific requirements of 13 online and 14 CD-ROM MEDLINE systems. A senior librarian and vendors' representatives constructed independent searches from the clinicians' questions. The librarian and clinician searches were run through each system, in command mode for the librarian and menu mode for clinicians, when available. Vendor searches were run through the vendors' own systems only. MAIN MEASUREMENTS: Numbers of relevant and irrelevant citations retrieved, cost (for online systems only), and time. RESULTS: Systems varied substantially for all searches, and for librarian and clinician searches separately, with respect to the numbers of relevant and irrelevant citations retrieved (p < 0.001 for both) and the cost per relevant citation (p = 0.012), but not with respect to the time per search. Based on combined rankings for the highest number of relevant and the lowest number of irrelevant citations retrieved, the SilverPlatter CD-ROM MEDLINE clinical journal subset performed best for librarian searches, while the PaperChase online system worked best for clinician searches. For cost per relevant citation retrieved, Dialog's Knowledge Index performed best for both librarian and clinician searches. CONCLUSIONS: There were substantial differences in the performances of competing MEDLINE systems, and performance was affected by search strategy, which was conceived by a librarian or by clinicians. PMID:7719810

  1. Discovering biomedical semantic relations in PubMed queries for information retrieval and database curation.

    PubMed

    Huang, Chung-Chi; Lu, Zhiyong

    2016-01-01

    Identifying relevant papers from the literature is a common task in biocuration. Most current biomedical literature search systems primarily rely on matching user keywords. Semantic search, on the other hand, seeks to improve search accuracy by understanding the entities and contextual relations in user keywords. However, past research has mostly focused on semantically identifying biological entities (e.g. chemicals, diseases and genes) with little effort on discovering semantic relations. In this work, we aim to discover biomedical semantic relations in PubMed queries in an automated and unsupervised fashion. Specifically, we focus on extracting and understanding the contextual information (or context patterns) that is used by PubMed users to represent semantic relations between entities such as 'CHEMICAL-1 compared to CHEMICAL-2' With the advances in automatic named entity recognition, we first tag entities in PubMed queries and then use tagged entities as knowledge to recognize pattern semantics. More specifically, we transform PubMed queries into context patterns involving participating entities, which are subsequently projected to latent topics via latent semantic analysis (LSA) to avoid the data sparseness and specificity issues. Finally, we mine semantically similar contextual patterns or semantic relations based on LSA topic distributions. Our two separate evaluation experiments of chemical-chemical (CC) and chemical-disease (CD) relations show that the proposed approach significantly outperforms a baseline method, which simply measures pattern semantics by similarity in participating entities. The highest performance achieved by our approach is nearly 0.9 and 0.85 respectively for the CC and CD task when compared against the ground truth in terms of normalized discounted cumulative gain (nDCG), a standard measure of ranking quality. These results suggest that our approach can effectively identify and return related semantic patterns in a ranked order

  2. Consistency and accuracy of indexing systematic review articles and meta-analyses in medline.

    PubMed

    Wilczynski, Nancy L; Haynes, R Brian

    2009-09-01

    Systematic review articles support the advance of science and translation of research evidence into healthcare practice. Inaccurate retrieval from medline could limit access to reviews. To determine the quality of indexing systematic reviews and meta-analyses in medline. The Clinical Hedges Database, containing the results of a hand search of 161 journals, was used to test medline indexing terms for their ability to retrieve systematic reviews that met predefined methodologic criteria (labelled as 'pass' review articles) and reviews that reported a meta-analysis. The Clinical Hedges Database contained 49 028 articles; 753 were 'pass' review articles (552 with a meta-analysis). In total 758 review articles (independent of whether they passed) reported a meta-analysis. The search strategy that retrieved the highest number of 'pass' systematic reviews achieved a sensitivity of 97.1%. The publication type 'meta analysis' had a false positive rate of 5.6% (95% CI 3.9 to 7.6), and false negative rate of 0.31% (95% CI 0.26 to 0.36) for retrieving systematic reviews that reported a meta-analysis. Inaccuracies in indexing systematic reviews and meta-analyses in medline can be partly overcome by a 5-term search strategy. Introducing a publication type for systematic reviews of the literature could improve retrieval performance.

  3. Heterogeneity in application, design, and analysis characteristics was found for controlled before-after and interrupted time series studies included in Cochrane reviews.

    PubMed

    Polus, Stephanie; Pieper, Dawid; Burns, Jacob; Fretheim, Atle; Ramsay, Craig; Higgins, Julian P T; Mathes, Tim; Pfadenhauer, Lisa M; Rehfuess, Eva A

    2017-11-01

    The aim of the study was to examine the application, design, and analysis characteristics of controlled before-after (CBA) and interrupted time series (ITS) studies and their use in Cochrane reviews. We searched the Cochrane library for reviews including these study designs from May 2012 to March 2015 and purposively selected, where available, two reviews each across 10 prespecified intervention types. We randomly selected two CBA and two ITS studies from each review. Two researchers independently extracted information from the studies and the respective reviews. Sixty-nine reviews considered CBA and ITS studies for inclusion. We analyzed 21 CBA and 16 ITS studies from 11 to 8 reviews, respectively. Cochrane reviews inconsistently defined and labeled CBA and ITS studies. Many studies did not meet the Cochrane definition or the minimum criteria provided by Cochrane Effective Practice and Organisation of Care. The studies present a heterogeneous set of study features and applied a large variety of analyses. While CBA and ITS studies represent important study designs to evaluate the effects of interventions, especially on a population or organizational level, unclear study design features challenge unequivocal classification and appropriate use. We discuss options for more specific definitions and explicit criteria for CBA and ITS studies. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  4. Evidence-based clinical practice, [corrected] evidence-based medicine and the Cochrane collaboration.

    PubMed

    Gambrill, E

    1999-03-01

    Encouraging professionals in training and later to consider practice-related research findings when making important clinical decisions is an on-going concern. Evidenced-Based Medicine (EBM) and the Cochrane Collaboration (CC) provide a source of tools and ideas for doing so, as well as a roster of colleagues who share this interest. Evidenced-based medicine involves integrating clinical expertise with the best available external evidence from systematic research as well as considering the values and expectations of patients/clients. Advantage can be taken of educational formats developed in EBM, such as problem-based learning and critical-appraisal workshops in which participants learn how to ask key answerable questions related to important clinical practice questions (e.g., regarding effectiveness, accuracy of assessment measures, prediction, prevention, and quality of clinical practice guidelines) and to access and critically appraise related research. The Cochrane Collaboration is a world-wide network of centers that prepare, maintain, and disseminate high-quality systematic reviews on the efficacy of healthcare. These databases allow access to evidence related to clinical practice decisions. Forging reciprocal working relationships with those involved in EBM reciprocal and the CC should contribute to the pursuit of shared goals such as basing clinical decisions on the best-available evidence and involving clients as informed consumers.

  5. Searching PubMed for studies on bacteremia, bloodstream infection, septicemia, or whatever the best term is: a note of caution.

    PubMed

    Søgaard, Mette; Andersen, Jens P; Schønheyder, Henrik C

    2012-04-01

    There is inconsistency in the terminology used to describe bacteremia. To demonstrate the impact on information retrieval, we compared the yield of articles from PubMed MEDLINE using the terms "bacteremia," "bloodstream infection," and "septicemia." We searched for articles published between 1966 and 2009, and depicted the relationships among queries graphically. To examine the content of the retrieved articles, we extracted all Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) terms and compared topic similarity using a cosine measure. The recovered articles differed greatly by term, and only 53 articles were captured by all terms. Of the articles retrieved by the "bacteremia" query, 21,438 (84.1%) were not captured when searching for "bloodstream infection" or "septicemia." Likewise, only 2,243 of the 11,796 articles recovered by free-text query for "bloodstream infection" were retrieved by the "bacteremia" query (19%). Entering "bloodstream infection" as a phrase, 46.1% of the records overlapped with the "bacteremia" query. Similarity measures ranged from 0.52 to 0.78 and were lowest for "bloodstream infection" as a phrase compared with "septicemia." Inconsistent terminology has a major impact on the yield of queries. Agreement on terminology should be sought and promoted by scientific journals. An immediate solution is to add "bloodstream infection" as entry term for bacteremia in the MeSH vocabulary. Copyright © 2012 Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, Inc. Published by Mosby, Inc. All rights reserved.

  6. Update of strategies to translate evidence from cochrane musculoskeletal group systematic reviews for use by various audiences.

    PubMed

    Rader, Tamara; Pardo Pardo, Jordi; Stacey, Dawn; Ghogomu, Elizabeth; Maxwell, Lara J; Welch, Vivian A; Singh, Jasvinder A; Buchbinder, Rachelle; Légaré, France; Santesso, Nancy; Toupin April, Karine; O'Connor, Annette M; Wells, George A; Winzenberg, Tania M; Johnston, Renea; Tugwell, Peter

    2014-02-01

    For rheumatology research to have a real influence on health and well-being, evidence must be tailored to inform the decisions of various audiences. The Cochrane Musculoskeletal Group (CMSG), one of 53 groups of the not-for-profit international Cochrane Collaboration, prepares, maintains, and disseminates systematic reviews of treatments for musculoskeletal diseases. While systematic reviews provided by the CMSG fill a major gap in meeting the need for high-quality evidence syntheses, our work does not end at the completion of a review. The term "knowledge translation" (KT) refers to the activities involved in bringing research evidence to various audiences in a useful form so it can be used to support decision making and improve practices. Systematic reviews give careful consideration to research methods and analysis. Because the review is often long and detailed, the clinically relevant results may not be apparent or in the optimal form for use by patients and their healthcare practitioners. This paper describes 10 formats, many of them new, for ways that evidence from Cochrane Reviews can be translated with the intention of meeting the needs of various audiences, including patients and their families, practitioners, policy makers, the press, and members of the public (the "5 Ps"). Current and future knowledge tools include summary of findings tables, patient decision aids, plain language summaries, press releases, clinical scenarios in general medical journals, frequently asked questions (Cochrane Clinical Answers), podcasts, Twitter messages, Journal Club materials, and the use of storytelling and narratives to support continuing medical education. Future plans are outlined to explore ways of improving the influence and usefulness of systematic reviews by providing results in formats suitable to our varied audiences.

  7. Cost-effectiveness of pharmaceutical management for osteoarthritis pain: a systematic review of the literature and recommendations for future economic evaluation.

    PubMed

    Xie, Feng; Tanvejsilp, Pimwara; Campbell, Kaitryn; Gaebel, Kathryn

    2013-05-01

    Osteoarthritis (OA) is a highly prevalent and chronic condition characterized by pain and physical disability. Currently, many treatments are available, and they primarily target pain relief. The objectives of this study were to systematically review economic evaluations for pharmaceutical management of OA pain and to provide methodological recommendations for future economic evaluation. Published literature was identified by searching the following bibliographic databases: MEDLINE (1948-16 November 2011) with In-Process records and EMBASE (1980-2011 Week 47) via Ovid; The Cochrane Library (Issue 4 of 4, 2011) and the Health Economic Evaluations Database (HEED) via Wiley; and PubMed (for non-MEDLINE records). The main search terms were OA and economic evaluations. Two reviewers independently screened all identified articles and extracted the data from those included in the final review. Twelve articles reporting the cost-effectiveness of various pharmaceuticals were included, with five being trial-based and seven being model-based economic evaluations. The mean health economics quality score of the included articles was 84 (minimum-maximum: 63-99). These evaluations varied in study design, treatments compared, and outcomes measured. The existing economic evaluations on pharmaceutical management of OA pain were of acceptable quality. Comparability of economic evaluations could be improved by selecting standard comparators, adopting a longer time horizon, and directly measuring health utilities.

  8. A comparison of the currency of secondary information sources in the biochemical literature. II. MEDLINE online and on CD-ROM.

    PubMed

    Grainger, F; Lyon, E

    1992-12-01

    The currency of selected versions of the MEDLINE database on CD-ROM and in online format was studied. The arrival of issues from 72 monthly journals and nine weekly titles during a 3-month period was monitored and their appearance in the various MEDLINE formats were recorded. Availability data for MEDLINE published by the National Library of Medicine were used as a baseline and subsequent distribution delays for the different MEDLINE formats were calculated. The study suggests a delay of approximately 2 weeks for indexing and mounting the MEDLINE file on to host computers for online access. A delay of 6-8 weeks was calculated for the MEDLINE data to be encoded on to compact disk, shipped and posted to the library customer. The currency of the MEDLINE database formats was compared with a weekly current-awareness service, CURRENT CONTENTS ON DISKETTE LIFE SCIENCES (CCOD). The majority of papers were indexed and distributed in CCOD within 10 weeks of publication date. Most papers appeared within 15 weeks in the online MEDLINE format and within 20 weeks in CD-ROM MEDLINE. The primary journal arrived at the library site within 5 weeks in most cases.

  9. Enhancing search efficiency by means of a search filter for finding all studies on animal experimentation in PubMed

    PubMed Central

    Hooijmans, Carlijn R; Tillema, Alice; Leenaars, Marlies; Ritskes-Hoitinga, Merel

    2010-01-01

    Collecting and analysing all available literature before starting an animal experiment is important and it is indispensable when writing a systematic review (SR) of animal research. Writing such review prevents unnecessary duplication of animal studies and thus unnecessary animal use (Reduction). One of the factors currently impeding the production of ‘high-quality’ SRs in laboratory animal science is the fact that searching for all available literature concerning animal experimentation is rather difficult. In order to diminish these difficulties, we developed a search filter for PubMed to detect all publications concerning animal studies. This filter was compared with the method most frequently used, the PubMed Limit: Animals, and validated further by performing two PubMed topic searches. Our filter performs much better than the PubMed limit: it retrieves, on average, 7% more records. Other important advantages of our filter are that it also finds the most recent records and that it is easy to use. All in all, by using our search filter in PubMed, all available literature concerning animal studies on a specific topic can easily be found and assessed, which will help in increasing the scientific quality and thereby the ethical validity of animal experiments. PMID:20551243

  10. Enhancing search efficiency by means of a search filter for finding all studies on animal experimentation in PubMed.

    PubMed

    Hooijmans, Carlijn R; Tillema, Alice; Leenaars, Marlies; Ritskes-Hoitinga, Merel

    2010-07-01

    Collecting and analysing all available literature before starting an animal experiment is important and it is indispensable when writing a systematic review (SR) of animal research. Writing such review prevents unnecessary duplication of animal studies and thus unnecessary animal use (Reduction). One of the factors currently impeding the production of 'high-quality' SRs in laboratory animal science is the fact that searching for all available literature concerning animal experimentation is rather difficult. In order to diminish these difficulties, we developed a search filter for PubMed to detect all publications concerning animal studies. This filter was compared with the method most frequently used, the PubMed Limit: Animals, and validated further by performing two PubMed topic searches. Our filter performs much better than the PubMed limit: it retrieves, on average, 7% more records. Other important advantages of our filter are that it also finds the most recent records and that it is easy to use. All in all, by using our search filter in PubMed, all available literature concerning animal studies on a specific topic can easily be found and assessed, which will help in increasing the scientific quality and thereby the ethical validity of animal experiments.

  11. Celebrating methodological challenges and changes: reflecting on the emergence and importance of the role of qualitative evidence in Cochrane reviews

    PubMed Central

    2013-01-01

    Cochrane systematic reviews have proven to be beneficial for decision making processes, both on a practitioner and a policy level, and there are current initiatives to extend the types of evidence used by them, including qualitative research. In this article we outline the major achievements of the Cochrane Qualitative and Implementation Methods Group. Although the Group has encountered numerous challenges in dealing with the evolution of qualitative evidence synthesis, both outside and within the Cochrane Collaboration, it has successfully responded to the challenges posed in terms of incorporating qualitative evidence in systematic reviews. The Methods Group will continue to advocate for more flexible and inclusive approaches to evidence synthesis in order to meet the exciting challenges and opportunities presented by mixed methods systematic reviews and reviews of complex interventions. PMID:24135194

  12. Combining PubMed knowledge and EHR data to develop a weighted bayesian network for pancreatic cancer prediction.

    PubMed

    Zhao, Di; Weng, Chunhua

    2011-10-01

    In this paper, we propose a novel method that combines PubMed knowledge and Electronic Health Records to develop a weighted Bayesian Network Inference (BNI) model for pancreatic cancer prediction. We selected 20 common risk factors associated with pancreatic cancer and used PubMed knowledge to weigh the risk factors. A keyword-based algorithm was developed to extract and classify PubMed abstracts into three categories that represented positive, negative, or neutral associations between each risk factor and pancreatic cancer. Then we designed a weighted BNI model by adding the normalized weights into a conventional BNI model. We used this model to extract the EHR values for patients with or without pancreatic cancer, which then enabled us to calculate the prior probabilities for the 20 risk factors in the BNI. The software iDiagnosis was designed to use this weighted BNI model for predicting pancreatic cancer. In an evaluation using a case-control dataset, the weighted BNI model significantly outperformed the conventional BNI and two other classifiers (k-Nearest Neighbor and Support Vector Machine). We conclude that the weighted BNI using PubMed knowledge and EHR data shows remarkable accuracy improvement over existing representative methods for pancreatic cancer prediction. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  13. Combining PubMed Knowledge and EHR Data to Develop a Weighted Bayesian Network for Pancreatic Cancer Prediction

    PubMed Central

    Zhao, Di; Weng, Chunhua

    2011-01-01

    In this paper, we propose a novel method that combines PubMed knowledge and Electronic Health Records to develop a weighted Bayesian Network Inference (BNI) model for pancreatic cancer prediction. We selected 20 common risk factors associated with pancreatic cancer and used PubMed knowledge to weigh the risk factors. A keyword-based algorithm was developed to extract and classify PubMed abstracts into three categories that represented positive, negative, or neutral associations between each risk factor and pancreatic cancer. Then we designed a weighted BNI model by adding the normalized weights into a conventional BNI model. We used this model to extract the EHR values for patients with or without pancreatic cancer, which then enabled us to calculate the prior probabilities for the 20 risk factors in the BNI. The software iDiagnosis was designed to use this weighted BNI model for predicting pancreatic cancer. In an evaluation using a case-control dataset, the weighted BNI model significantly outperformed the conventional BNI and two other classifiers (k-Nearest Neighbor and Support Vector Machine). We conclude that the weighted BNI using PubMed knowledge and EHR data shows remarkable accuracy improvement over existing representative methods for pancreatic cancer prediction. PMID:21642013

  14. FNLM 2013 Events & Programs Announced | NIH MedlinePlus the Magazine

    MedlinePlus

    ... expand programs that promote medical education and health literacy in several related areas. Professional Education In Spring ... site: www.fnlm.org Mobile MedlinePlus! Trusted medical information on your mobile phone. http://m.medlineplus.gov ...

  15. Methodological quality of systematic reviews in subfertility: a comparison of Cochrane and non-Cochrane systematic reviews in assisted reproductive technologies.

    PubMed

    Windsor, B; Popovich, I; Jordan, V; Showell, M; Shea, B; Farquhar, C

    2012-12-01

    Are there differences in the methodological quality of Cochrane systematic reviews (CRs) and non-Cochrane systematic reviews (NCRs) of assisted reproductive technologies? CRs on assisted reproduction are of higher methodological quality than similar reviews published in other journals. The quality of systematic reviews varies. This was a cross-sectional study of 30 CR and 30 NCR systematic reviews that were randomly selected from the eligible reviews identified from a literature search for the years 2007-2011. We extracted data on the reporting and methodological characteristics of the included systematic reviews. We assessed the methodological quality of the reviews using the 11-domain Measurement Tool to Assess the Methodological Quality of Systematic Reviews (AMSTAR) tool and subsequently compared CR and NCR systematic reviews. The AMSTAR quality assessment found that CRs were superior to NCRs. For 10 of 11 AMSTAR domains, the requirements were met in >50% of CRs, but only 4 of 11 domains showed requirements being met in >50% of NCRs. The strengths of CRs are the a priori study design, comprehensive literature search, explicit lists of included and excluded studies and assessments of internal validity. Significant failings in the CRs were found in duplicate study selection and data extraction (67% meeting requirements), assessment for publication bias (53% meeting requirements) and reporting of conflicts of interest (47% meeting requirements). NCRs were more likely to contain methodological weaknesses as the majority of the domains showed <40% of reviews meeting requirements, e.g. a priori study design (17%), duplicate study selection and data extraction (17%), assessment of study quality (27%), study quality in the formulation of conclusions (23%) and reporting of conflict of interests (10%). The AMSTAR assessment can only judge what is reported by authors. Although two of the five authors are involved in the production of CRs, the risk of bias was reduced by

  16. Analysis of queries sent to PubMed at the point of care: Observation of search behaviour in a medical teaching hospital

    PubMed Central

    Hoogendam, Arjen; Stalenhoef, Anton FH; Robbé, Pieter F de Vries; Overbeke, A John PM

    2008-01-01

    Background The use of PubMed to answer daily medical care questions is limited because it is challenging to retrieve a small set of relevant articles and time is restricted. Knowing what aspects of queries are likely to retrieve relevant articles can increase the effectiveness of PubMed searches. The objectives of our study were to identify queries that are likely to retrieve relevant articles by relating PubMed search techniques and tools to the number of articles retrieved and the selection of articles for further reading. Methods This was a prospective observational study of queries regarding patient-related problems sent to PubMed by residents and internists in internal medicine working in an Academic Medical Centre. We analyzed queries, search results, query tools (Mesh, Limits, wildcards, operators), selection of abstract and full-text for further reading, using a portal that mimics PubMed. Results PubMed was used to solve 1121 patient-related problems, resulting in 3205 distinct queries. Abstracts were viewed in 999 (31%) of these queries, and in 126 (39%) of 321 queries using query tools. The average term count per query was 2.5. Abstracts were selected in more than 40% of queries using four or five terms, increasing to 63% if the use of four or five terms yielded 2–161 articles. Conclusion Queries sent to PubMed by physicians at our hospital during daily medical care contain fewer than three terms. Queries using four to five terms, retrieving less than 161 article titles, are most likely to result in abstract viewing. PubMed search tools are used infrequently by our population and are less effective than the use of four or five terms. Methods to facilitate the formulation of precise queries, using more relevant terms, should be the focus of education and research. PMID:18816391

  17. Mary Tyler Moore Helps Launch NIH MedlinePlus Magazine

    MedlinePlus

    ... disease. Please let us know if you have special requests about future topics in the magazine and if you would like to receive a free subscription to NIH MedlinePlus . Sincerely, Paul G. Rogers Chairman Friends of the National Library of Medicine Winter 2007 Issue: Volume 2 Number ...

  18. Optimal search strategies for detecting health services research studies in MEDLINE

    PubMed Central

    Wilczynski, Nancy L.; Haynes, R. Brian; Lavis, John N.; Ramkissoonsingh, Ravi; Arnold-Oatley, Alexandra E.

    2004-01-01

    Background Evidence from health services research (HSR) is currently thinly spread through many journals, making it difficult for health services researchers, managers and policy-makers to find research on clinical practice guidelines and the appropriateness, process, outcomes, cost and economics of health care services. We undertook to develop and test search terms to retrieve from the MEDLINE database HSR articles meeting minimum quality standards. Methods The retrieval performance of 7445 methodologic search terms and phrases in MEDLINE (the test) were compared with a hand search of the literature (the gold standard) for each issue of 68 journal titles for the year 2000 (a total of 25 936 articles). We determined sensitivity, specificity and precision (the positive predictive value) of the MEDLINE search strategies. Results A majority of the articles that were classified as outcome assessment, but fewer than half of those in the other categories, were considered methodologically acceptable (no methodologic criteria were applied for cost studies). Combining individual search terms to maximize sensitivity, while keeping specificity at 50% or more, led to sensitivities in the range of 88.1% to 100% for several categories (specificities ranged from 52.9% to 97.4%). When terms were combined to maximize specificity while keeping sensitivity at 50% or more, specificities of 88.8% to 99.8% were achieved. When terms were combined to maximize sensitivity and specificity while minimizing the differences between the 2 measurements, most strategies for HSR categories achieved sensitivity and specificity of at least 80%. Interpretation Sensitive and specific search strategies were validated for retrieval of HSR literature from MEDLINE. These strategies have been made available for public use by the US National Library of Medicine at www.nlm.nih.gov/nichsr/hedges/search.html. PMID:15534310

  19. Assigning categorical information to Japanese medical terms using MeSH and MEDLINE.

    PubMed

    Onogi, Yuzo

    2007-01-01

    This paper reports on the assigning of MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) categories to Japanese terms in an English-Japanese dictionary using the titles and abstracts of articles indexed in MEDLINE. In a previous study, 30,000 of 80,000 terms in the dictionary were mapped to MeSH terms by normalized comparison. It was reasoned that if the remaining dictionary terms appeared in MEDLINE-indexed articles that are indexed using MeSH terms, then relevancies between the dictionary terms and MeSH terms could be calculated, and thus MeSH categories assigned. This study compares two approaches for calculating the weight matrix. One is the TF*IDF method and the other uses the inner product of two weight matrices. About 20,000 additional dictionary terms were identified in MEDLINE-indexed articles published between 2000 and 2004. The precision and recall of these algorithms were evaluated separately for MeSH terms and non-MeSH terms. Unfortunately, the precision and recall of the algorithms was not good, but this method will help with manual assignment of MeSH categories to dictionary terms.

  20. History and Trends of "Personal Health Record" Research in PubMed

    PubMed Central

    Kim, Jeongeun; Bates, David W.

    2011-01-01

    Objectives The purpose of this study was to review history and trends of personal health record research in PubMed and to provide accurate understanding and categorical analysis of expert opinions. Methods For the search strategy, PubMed was queried for 'personal health record, personal record, and PHR' in the title and abstract fields. Those containing different definitions of the word were removed by one-by-one analysis from the results, 695 articles. In the end, total of 229 articles were analyzed in this research. Results The results show that the changes in terms over the years and the shift to patient centeredness and mixed usage. And we identified history and trend of PHR research in some category that the number of publications by year, topic, methodologies and target diseases. Also from analysis of MeSH terms, we can show the focal interest in regards the PHR boundaries and related subjects. Conclusions For PHRs to be efficiently used by general public, initial understanding of the history and trends of PHR research may be helpful. Simultaneously, accurate understanding and categorical analysis of expert opinions that can lead to the development and growth of PHRs will be valuable to their adoption and expansion. PMID:21818452

  1. A Simple and Practical Dictionary-based Approach for Identification of Proteins in Medline Abstracts

    PubMed Central

    Egorov, Sergei; Yuryev, Anton; Daraselia, Nikolai

    2004-01-01

    Objective: The aim of this study was to develop a practical and efficient protein identification system for biomedical corpora. Design: The developed system, called ProtScan, utilizes a carefully constructed dictionary of mammalian proteins in conjunction with a specialized tokenization algorithm to identify and tag protein name occurrences in biomedical texts and also takes advantage of Medline “Name-of-Substance” (NOS) annotation. The dictionaries for ProtScan were constructed in a semi-automatic way from various public-domain sequence databases followed by an intensive expert curation step. Measurements: The recall and precision of the system have been determined using 1,000 randomly selected and hand-tagged Medline abstracts. Results: The developed system is capable of identifying protein occurrences in Medline abstracts with a 98% precision and 88% recall. It was also found to be capable of processing approximately 300 abstracts per second. Without utilization of NOS annotation, precision and recall were found to be 98.5% and 84%, respectively. Conclusion: The developed system appears to be well suited for protein-based Medline indexing and can help to improve biomedical information retrieval. Further approaches to ProtScan's recall improvement also are discussed. PMID:14764613

  2. Coverage and overlaps in bibliographic databases relevant to forensic medicine: a comparative analysis of MEDLINE.

    PubMed Central

    Yonker, V A; Young, K P; Beecham, S K; Horwitz, S; Cousin, K

    1990-01-01

    This study was designed to make a comparative evaluation of the performance of MEDLINE in covering serial literature. Forensic medicine was chosen because it is an interdisciplinary subject area that would test MEDLARS at the periphery of the system. The evaluation of database coverage was based upon articles included in the bibliographies of scholars in the field of forensic medicine. This method was considered appropriate for characterizing work used by researchers in this field. The results of comparing MEDLINE to other databases evoked some concerns about the selective indexing policy of MEDLINE in serving the interests of those working in forensic medicine. PMID:2403829

  3. Role of Cochrane reviews in pediatric neurology.

    PubMed

    Girisch, Wolfgang; Willhelm, Christiane; Gottschling, Sven; Gortner, Ludwig; Meyer, Sascha

    2012-02-01

    Evidence-based medicine in pediatric neurology is considered an important contributor to the best quality of care. We performed a literature review of all Cochrane reviews from 1996-2010 in pediatric neurology. Some reviews concluded that a certain intervention provided benefits, some concluded that certain interventions should not be performed, and some concluded that the current level of evidence was inconclusive. One hundred and twelve reviews were enrolled; only 17 exclusively involved children. In 33/112, a clear recommendation in favor of a certain intervention was given, 11/112 issued a conditionally positive recommendation, and 32/112 concluded that certain interventions should not be performed. Six concluded that no differences were evident between different therapeutic/treatment options. Thirty were inconclusive. The proportion of inconclusive reviews increased during three a priori defined time intervals. Common criticisms regarding quality of enrolled studies included heterogeneous study populations (49/112), a small number of participants (48/112), and a lack of comparability of studies (40/112). An ongoing need exists for high-quality research to reduce the proportion of inconclusive meta-analyses. Further randomized, controlled trials should involve only pediatric populations. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  4. A missing ancestry - Genetic Testing | NIH MedlinePlus the Magazine

    MedlinePlus

    ... Testing - From Genetics Home Reference: the benefits, costs, risks, and limitations of genetic testing Genetic Testing Registry -A publicly funded medical genetics information resource developed for physicians, other health care providers, and researchers MedlinePlus — Genetic Testing CLINSEQ®: ...

  5. Electrical stimulation for preventing and treating post-stroke shoulder pain: a systematic Cochrane review.

    PubMed

    Price, C I; Pandyan, A D

    2001-02-01

    Shoulder pain after stroke is common and disabling. The optimal management is uncertain, but electrical stimulation (ES) is often used to treat and prevent pain. The objective of this review was to determine the efficacy of any form of surface ES in the prevention and/or treatment of pain around the shoulder at any time after stroke. We searched the Cochrane Stroke Review Group trials register and undertook further searches of Medline, Embase and CINAHL. Contact was established with equipment manufacturers and centres that have published on the topic of ES. We considered all randomized trials that assessed any surface ES technique (functional electrical stimulation (FES), transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) or other), applied at any time since stroke for the purpose of prevention or treatment of shoulder pain. Two reviewers independently selected trials for inclusion, assessed trial quality and extracted the data. Four trials (a total of 170 subjects) fitted the inclusion criteria. Study design and ES technique varied considerably, often precluding the combination of studies. Population numbers were small. There was no significant change in pain incidence (odds ratio (OR) 0.64; 95% CI 0.19-2.14) or change in pain intensity (standardized mean difference (SMD) 0.13; 95% CI -1.0-1.25) after ES treatment compared with control. There was a significant treatment effect in favour of ES for improvement in pain-free range of passive humeral lateral rotation (weighted mean difference (WMD) 9.17; 95% CI 1.43-16.91). In these studies ES reduced the severity of glenohumeral subluxation (SMD -1.13; 95% CI -1.66 to -0.60), but there was no significant effect on upper limb motor recovery (SMD 0.24; 95% CI -0.14-0.62) or upper limb spasticity (WMD 0.05; 95% CI -0.28-0.37). There did not appear to be any negative effects of electrical stimulation at the shoulder. The evidence from randomized controlled trials so far does not confirm or refute that ES around the

  6. Prophylactic antibiotics for the prevention of preterm birth in women at risk: a meta-analysis.

    PubMed

    Simcox, Rachael; Sin, Wing-To A; Seed, Paul T; Briley, Annette; Shennan, Andrew H

    2007-10-01

    Preterm birth (PTB) is the major determinant of perinatal morbidity and mortality. Infection is implicated in a large proportion of preterm deliveries, but there is no consensus regarding the efficacy of antibiotic prophylaxis for women at risk. To determine whether antibiotic treatment reduces the risk of preterm delivery in asymptomatic pregnant women at risk of PTB. Relevant publications were identified via electronic searches of MEDLINE (1966 to August 2005), The Cochrane Pregnancy and Childbirth Group trials register, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (the Cochrane Library, Issue 3, 2005) and PubMed using multiple search terms related to PTB and antibiotics. Publications were limited to randomised controlled trials comparing antibiotics with placebo given to asymptomatic non-labouring women. A random effect model was used, and combined risk ratios calculated for the various risk groups. Associations between treatment effect and the rate of PTB were analysed by meta-regression. Seventeen trials were included, 12 identifying women at risk by abnormal vaginal flora, three on women at high risk from a previous PTB and two recruiting women based on positive fetal fibronectin status. There was no significant association between antibiotic treatment and reduction in PTB irrespective of criteria used to assess risk, the antimicrobial agent administered, or gestational age at time of treatment (overall combined random effect for delivery at less than 37 weeks RR 1.03 (95% CI 0.86-1.24)). Treating women at risk of PTB with antibiotics does not reduce the risk of subsequent PTB.

  7. Knowledge transfer to clinicians and consumers by the Cochrane Musculoskeletal Group.

    PubMed

    Santesso, Nancy; Maxwell, Lara; Tugwell, Peter S; Wells, George A; O'connor, Annette M; Judd, Maria; Buchbinder, Rachelle

    2006-11-01

    The Cochrane Musculoskeletal Group (CMSG) is one of 50 groups of the Cochrane Collaboration that prepares, maintains, and disseminates systematic reviews of treatments for musculoskeletal diseases. Once systematic reviews are completed, the next challenge is presenting the results in useful formats to be integrated into the healthcare decisions of clinicians and consumers. The CMSG recommends 3 methods to aid knowledge translation and exchange between clinicians and patients: produce clinical relevance tables, create graphical displays using face figures, and write consumer summaries and patient decision aids. Accordingly, CMSG has developed specific guidelines to help researchers and authors convert the pooled estimates of metaanalyses in the systematic reviews to user-friendly numbers. First, clinical relevance tables are developed that include absolute and relative benefits or harms and the numbers needed to treat. Next, the numbers from the clinical relevance tables are presented graphically using faces. The faces represent a group of 100 people and are shaded according to how many people out of 100 benefited or were harmed by the interventions. The user-friendly numbers are also included in short summaries and decision aids written for patients. The different levels of detail in the summaries and decision aids provide patients with tools to prepare them to discuss treatment options with their clinicians. Methods to improve the effects and usability of systematic reviews by providing results in more clinically relevant formats are essential. Both clinicians and consumers can use these products to use evidence-based information in individual and shared decision-making.

  8. Fenestrated and Chimney Technique for Juxtarenal Aortic Aneurysm: A Systematic Review and Pooled Data Analysis

    PubMed Central

    Li, Yue; Hu, Zhongzhou; Bai, Chujie; Liu, Jie; Zhang, Tao; Ge, Yangyang; Luan, Shaoliang; Guo, Wei

    2016-01-01

    Juxtarenal aortic aneurysms (JAA) account for approximately 15% of abdominal aortic aneurysms. Fenestrated endovascular aneurysm repair (FEVAR) and chimney endovascular aneurysm repair (CH-EVAR) are both effective methods to treat JAAs, but the comparative effectiveness of these treatment modalities is unclear. We searched the PubMed, Medline, Embase, and Cochrane databases to identify English language articles published between January 2005 and September 2013 on management of JAA with fenestrated and chimney techniques to conduct a systematic review to compare outcomes of patients with juxtarenal aortic aneurysm (JAA) treated with the two techniques. We compared nine F-EVAR cohort studies including 542 JAA patients and 8 CH-EVAR cohorts with 158 JAA patients regarding techniques success rates, 30-day mortality, late mortality, endoleak events and secondary intervention rates. The results of this systematic review indicate that both fenestrated and chimney techniques are attractive options for JAAs treatment with encouraging early and mid-term outcomes. PMID:26869488

  9. [Complexity of care: meanings and interpretation].

    PubMed

    Cologna, Marina; Zanolli, Daniela; Saiani, Luisa

    2010-01-01

    Although the concept of complexity of care is widely used and discussed, its meaning is blurred and its characteristics are not well defined. To identify the words used to define the concept of complexity in the literature and its meaning. A literature search was performed on the following databases: Pubmed, Medline, Ebsco, Cinahl and Cochrane. No temporal limits were set; publications written in English and Italian were included. Several terms are used to define the concept of complexity, often interchangeably notwithstanding their different meaning. Three main concepts were identified: nursing intensity that includes the concepts of dependency, severity and complexity of patients care; nursing workload that comprises the concept of nursing intensity and all the activities not patient-related; and the patient acuity that includes the severity of illness and the caring intensity. A common definition is needed to be able to use the concept of complexity of care to allocate nursing resources.

  10. Oral oncoprevention by phytochemicals - a systematic review disclosing the therapeutic dilemma.

    PubMed

    Bhavana, Sujana Mulk; Lakshmi, Chintamaneni Raja

    2014-10-01

    The aim of this article is to emphasize and focus on the preclinical and clinical update on phytochemicals and their role in prevention of oral carcinogenesis. Accordingly, the literature search was made following database: Embase, Medline, Science Citation index, NIH public access, pubmed and Cochrane Database of systematic reviews. Several internet websites were also searched to access publications from major phytochemical research sites and relevant information was obtained with regards to each plant chemical. The authors also spotted different list servers through wignet.com, Stanford cancer research etc: The data base search was made from the inception to 1988 and updated till 2013. A systematic method was obtained for literature search and data collection was critiqued. 60 articles were searched, among which there were only 6 systematic reviews on phytochemicals regarding oral carcinogenesis. Additional articles were obtained on phytochemicals and their mechanism of action in other cancers, which were regarded as background material. The studies done by various authors on each phytochemical has been briefly emphasized.

  11. Adherence to nutritional therapy in obese adolescents; a review.

    PubMed

    França, Silvana Lima Guimarães; Sahade, Viviane; Nunes, Mônica; Adan, Luis F

    2013-01-01

    Considering the controversies existent on the subject, the aim of this review is to discuss adherence to diet in obese adolescents. The selection of articles was made in the SCOPUS, COCHRANE, APA Psyc Net, SciELO, LILACS, CAPES Journals, PUBMED/MEDLINE and GOOGLE ACADEMIC databases. Studies published between 2002 and 2012 were selected. There was lack of evidence of conceptual discussion about adherence to diet in obesity in the child-youth context, in addition to scarcity of data on adherence to diet itself in obese adolescents and the methods of evaluating this. Lastly, multiple interdependent factors were found which both facilitated and made the process of adherence to diet difficult for obese youngsters. The majority of these (factors) belong to the socioeconomic and cultural dimension, in addition to pointing out cognitive and psychological factors and those associated with health services and professionals. Copyright © AULA MEDICA EDICIONES 2013. Published by AULA MEDICA. All rights reserved.

  12. Heart rate variability in children with type 1 diabetes mellitus.

    PubMed

    Gardim, Camila Balsamo; de Oliveira, Bruno Affonso P; Bernardo, Aline Fernanda B; Gomes, Rayana Loch; Pacagnelli, Francis Lopes; Lorençoni, Roselene Modolo R; Vanderlei, Luiz Carlos M

    2014-06-01

    To gather current information about the effects of type 1 diabetes mellitus on children's cardiac autonomic behavior. The search of articles was conducted on PubMed, Ibecs, Medline, Cochrane, Lilacs, SciELO and PEDro databases using the MeSH terms: "autonomic nervous system", "diabetes mellitus", "child", "type 1 diabetes mellitus", "sympathetic nervous system" and "parasympathetic nervous system", and their respective versions in Portuguese (DeCS). Articles published from January 2003 to February 2013 that enrolled children with 9-12 years old with type 1 diabetes mellitus were included in the review. The electronic search resulted in four articles that approached the heart rate variability in children with type 1 diabetes mellitus, showing that, in general, these children present decreased global heart rate variability and vagal activity. The practice of physical activity promoted benefits for these individuals. Children with type 1 diabetes mellitus present changes on autonomic modulation, indicating the need for early attention to avoid future complications in this group.

  13. The effect of whole body vibration therapy on the physical function of people with type II diabetes mellitus: a systematic review.

    PubMed

    Zhang BSc, Jiaqi; Zhang, Hongyue; Kan, Laidi; Zhang, Chi; Wang, Pu

    2016-09-01

    [Purpose] To review and assess the effectiveness of whole body vibration therapy on the physical function of patients with type II diabetes mellitus. [Subjects and Methods] A computerized database search was performed through PubMed, Medline, EMBASE, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, the Physiotherapy Evidence Database, and the reference lists of all relevant articles. The methodological quality was evaluated using the Physiotherapy Evidence Database scale. [Results] Five articles (four studies) with a combined study population of 154 patients with type II diabetes qualified for the inclusion criteria. Our review shows that whole body vibration therapy may have a positive impact on the muscle strength and balance of people with type 2 diabetes mellitus, whereas the effect on their mobility is still under discussion. [Conclusion] There was no sufficient evidence to support the premise that whole body vibration therapy is beneficial for the physical function of people with type II diabetes. Larger and higher-quality trials are needed.

  14. Economics of childbirth.

    PubMed

    Fahy, Michael; Doyle, Orla; Denny, Kevin; McAuliffe, Fionnuala M; Robson, Michael

    2013-05-01

    Increasing birth rates have raised questions for policy makers and hospital management about the economic costs of childbirth. The purpose of this article is to identify and review all existing scientific studies in relation to the economic costs of alternative modes of childbirth delivery and to highlight deficiencies in the existing scientific research. We searched Cochrane, Centre for Reviews and Dissemination, EconLit, the Excerpta Medica Database, the Health Economic Evaluations Database, MEDLINE and PubMed. Thirty articles are included in this review. The main findings suggest that there is no internationally acceptable childbirth cost and clinical outcome classification system that allows for comparisons across different delivery modes. This review demonstrates that a better understanding and classification of the costs and associated clinical outcomes of childbirth is required to allow for valid comparisons between maternity units, and to inform policy makers and hospital management. © 2013 The Authors Acta Obstetricia et Gynecologica Scandinavica © 2013 Nordic Federation of Societies of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

  15. A systematic review of left unilateral electroconvulsive therapy.

    PubMed

    Kellner, C H; Farber, K G; Chen, X R; Mehrotra, A; Zipursky, G D N

    2017-08-01

    To systematically review the published clinical trials, case series, and case reports on left unilateral (LUL) electrode placement for clinical electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). PubMed, Ovid Medline, and the Cochrane Library were searched for articles concerning LUL ECT. Number of patients, efficacy, and cognitive outcomes were extracted from the papers that met our inclusion criteria. A total of 52 articles were included in this review, consisting of 33 clinical trials, seven case series, and 12 case reports. Overall, the efficacy of LUL electrode placement for the treatment of depression and psychosis is similar to that of right unilateral (RUL) and bilateral (BL) electrode placements. Patients receiving LUL ECT tend to experience more verbal memory impairment than patients receiving RUL ECT, but less verbal impairment than patients receiving BL ECT. In contrast, patients receiving LUL ECT tended to experience the least visual and nonverbal memory impairment, compared to patients receiving RUL or BL ECT. © 2017 John Wiley & Sons A/S. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

  16. The effects of therapeutic touch on pain.

    PubMed

    Monroe, Carolyn Magdalen

    2009-06-01

    To better understand how Therapeutic Touch can be used in today's health care arena, this integrative literature review will examine current research that will help answer the question, Does Therapeutic Touch reduce pain? An extensive search was conducted of the online databases MEDLINE, CINAHL, Cochrane Library, EMBASE, PsychLIT, and PubMed to retrieve research articles published from 1997 to 2007. Seven studies that were conducted between 1997 and 2004 were found and only five of the seven were included as pertinent evidence to answer the question. All of the research that was reviewed to answer whether Therapeutic Touch could significantly reduce pain revealed a majority of statistically significant positive results for implementing this intervention. Because there are no identified risks to Therapeutic Touch as a pain relief measure, it is safe to recommend despite the limitations of current research. Therapeutic Touch should be considered among the many possible nursing interventions for the treatment of pain.

  17. Disciplinary processes and the management of poor performance among UK nurses: bad apple or systemic failure? A scoping study.

    PubMed

    Traynor, Michael; Stone, Katie; Cook, Hannah; Gould, Dinah; Maben, Jill

    2014-03-01

    The rise of managerialism within healthcare systems has been noted globally. This paper uses the findings of a scoping study to investigate the management of poor performance among nurses and midwives in the United Kingdom within this context. The management of poor performance among clinicians in the NHS has been seen as a significant policy problem. There has been a profound shift in the distribution of power between professional and managerial groups in many health systems globally. We examined literature published between 2000 and 10 to explore aspects of poor performance and its management. We used Web of Science, CINAHL, MEDLINE, British Nursing Index, HMIC, Cochrane Library and PubMed. Empirical data are limited but indicate that nurses and midwives are the clinical groups most likely to be suspended and that poor performance is often represented as an individual deficit. A focus on the individual as a source of trouble can serve as a distraction from more complex systematic problems. © 2013 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

  18. Lidocaine and Pain Management in the Emergency Department: A Review Article

    PubMed Central

    Golzari, Samad EJ; Soleimanpour, Hassan; Mahmoodpoor, Ata; Safari, Saeid; Ala, Alireza

    2014-01-01

    Context: In the present review, the analgesic effects of lidocaine in acute or chronic painful conditions in the emergency department are discussed. Lidocaine, as a medium-acting local anesthetic with short onset time, is well-recognized, not only as a valuable medication for numerous neuropathic pain conditions, but also for the management of both acute and chronic pain. Evidence Acquisition: Research studies related to the different applications of lidocaine in the emergency department were collected from different databases including Cochrane library, Medline (Ovid) and PubMed. The pooled data were categorized, summarized and finally compared. Results: Our study revealed that lidocaine is broadly used in various therapeutic approaches for different types of pain, such as visceral/central pain, renal colic etc., in the emergency department. Conclusions: The antinociceptive properties of lidocaine are derived from multifaceted mechanisms, turning it into a medication that is safe to administer via different routes which makes it available for use in a variety of medical conditions. PMID:24660158

  19. The interactions between hemostasis and resistance training: a review

    PubMed Central

    Nascimento, Dahan da Cunha; Neto, Frederico Ribeiro; de Santana, Frederico Santos; da Silva, Renato André Sousa; dos Santos-Neto, Leopoldo; Balsamo, Sandor

    2012-01-01

    Physical inactivity is considered a risk factor for cardiovascular disease and is strongly associated with changes in arterial structure. Regular physical activity and exercise contributes to the prevention of coronary artery disease. Therefore, cardiovascular and resistance training improve hemostatic parameters and promote a less thrombotic blood profile. This review highlights the studies, mechanisms, and outcomes relating to the effectiveness of resistance training on the process of hemostasis. The Pubmed, Scopus, Medline, Scielo, Lilacs, Ibecs, and Cochrane databases were used to locate the original articles. Seventeen studies were found during the research process. Of these, ten articles were excluded. Those protocols using a high volume of training for young adults showed a greater fibrinolytic response, and training protocols with intensities above 80% of 1 maximum repetition showed an increased platelet activity. In subjects with coronary artery disease, just one session of resistance training resulted in improvement in the fibrinolytic system (tissue plasminogen activator) without raising potential thrombotic markers. PMID:22419885

  20. Balancing efficacy against safety in sublingual immunotherapy with inhalant allergens: what is the best approach?

    PubMed

    Caminati, Marco; Dama, Annarita; Schiappoli, Michele; Senna, Gianenrico

    2013-10-01

    Over the last 20 years, studies and clinical trials have demonstrated efficacy, safety and cost-effectiveness of sublingual immunotherapy (SLIT) for respiratory allergic diseases. Nevertheless, it seems to be mostly used as a second-line therapeutic option, and adherence to treatment is not always optimal. Selective literature research was done in Medline and PubMed, including guidelines, position papers and Cochrane meta-analyses concerning SLIT in adult patients. The most recent reviews confirm SLIT as viable and efficacious treatment especially for allergic rhinitis, even if the optimal dosage, duration, schedule are not clearly established for most of the products. Despite an optimal safety profile, tolerability and patient-reported outcomes concerning SLIT have received poor attention until now. Recently, new tools have been specifically developed in order to investigate these aspects. Regular assessment of tolerability profile and SLIT-related patient-reported outcomes will allow balancing efficacy with tolerability and all the other patient-related variables that may affect treatment effectiveness beyond its efficacy.