Table 4

Candidate search terms for EMBASE

Search Term
Reference Standard retrieved (N = 191)
Total retrieved (N = 1521)
Sensitivity
Precision
Specificity

Controlled Thesaurus Terms
Case report/
1
348
0.5
0.3
73.9
Clinical trial/
23
131
12.0
17.6
91.9
Cohort analysis/
3
9
1.6
33.3
99.5
Comparative study/
13
39
6.8
33.3
98.0
Controlled study/
79
309
41.4
25.6
82.7
Follow-up study/
45
212
23.6
21.2
87.4
Major clinical study/
106
308
55.5
34.4
84.8
Prospective study/
22
74
11.5
29.7
96.1
Retrospective study/
29
108
15.2
26.8
94.1
Treatment outcome/
88
447
46.1
19.7
73.0
Textwords (.tw)
baseline
16
47
8.4
34.0
97.7
case control$
3
9
1.6
33.3
99.5
case series
27
122
14.1
22.1
92.9
cases
38
201
19.9
18.9
87.7
chang$
51
297
26.7
17.2
81.5
cohort
8
19
4.2
42.1
99.2
compar$ or compara$
90
287
47.1
31.4
85.2
consecutive$
51
142
26.7
35.9
93.2
evaluat$
96
425
50.3
22.6
75.3
follow$
50
259
26.2
19.3
84.3
non compara$ or noncompara$
13
78
6.8
16.7
95.1
non random$ or nonrandom$
19
46
9.9
41.3
98.0
observational
3
20
1.6
15.0
98.7
postoperat$ or post operat$
91
494
47.6
18.4
69.7
preoperat$ or pre operat$
101
418
52.9
24.2
76.2
prospective$
56
195
29.3
28.7
89.5
retrospective$
61
223
31.9
27.3
87.8
reviewed
20
66
10.5
30.3
96.5
EMTREE and/or Textword (.mp)
cohort$
8
21
4.2
38.1
99.0
compare$ or compara$
90
297
47.1
30.3
84.4
follow$
61
325
31.9
18.8
80.1
prospective$
57
200
29.8
28.5
89.2
retrospective$
64
233
33.5
27.5
87.3
postoperat$ or post operat$
123
827
64.4
14.9
47.1
preoperat$ or pre operat$
106
491
55.5
21.6
71.1

Key

/ EMTREE term

tw Text word(s) from title and/or abstract fields

mp Term from EMTREE and/or title and/or abstract fields.

$ Truncation symbol

Fraser et al. BMC Medical Research Methodology 2006 6:41   doi:10.1186/1471-2288-6-41