Identifying Useful Terms to Retrieve Survival Data Meta-Analyses Publications for Bibliographic Databases Search Strategies

Abstract

Introduction: Quality research and quality evidence based medicine practice has an important pillar in a solid bibliographic documentation. Quality bibliographic documentation makes use of search strategies to retrieve articles from search engines of bibliographic databases. The AIM of this study was the identification of useful search terms to be used in search strategies that try to find meta-analyses of survival data. Materials and Methods: A qualitative study based on text analysis was undertaken to identify useful terms for search strategies in abstracts of scientific papers. Survival analysis meta-analyses publication type studies, published between 1996 and 2005, were searched in Medline bibliographic database through Pubmed web interface. Each abstract was analysed and each important terms were noted down if they were considered to be useful in the creation of search strategies for analysis of survival data, or meta-analyses. Results: Pubmed search yielded 773 results. From these search results 401 (52%) fulfilled inclusion criteria.  The terms that were identified as useful in search strategies for meta-analyses of survival data are presented in the paper.