Dickersin K, Hewitt P, Mutch L, Chalmers I, Chalmers T C
Control Clin Trials. 1985 Dec;6(4):306-17. doi: 10.1016/0197-2456(85)90106-0.
The existence of a Register of Controlled Trials in Perinatal Medicine (National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit, Oxford, England) has offered an opportunity to assess the efficacy of online searching of MEDLINE, an example of a broad bibliographic database. Retrieval of all relevant randomized control trials (RCTs) in a given field is important in analyses in which results are pooled (meta-analyses). Reports of RCTs of prevention and treatment of neonatal hyperbilirubinemia and prevention of intraventricular hemorrhage (IVH) for the years 1966-1983 were sought in both the Register and MEDLINE files. Comparison of subject searches revealed a number of unlisted papers in each file that were then found to be present by an author search. In the MEDLINE searching an amateur was clearly less efficient than an expert, but the expert recovered only 29% of the relevant hyperbilirubinemia papers available in MEDLINE, and only 56% of the identified IVH RCTs. Some of the deficiencies in recovery have been corrected by indexing improvements, such as the capability of identifying text words in abstracts, and the addition of new medical subject heading terms (MeSH) such as RANDOM ALLOCATION. Efficiency will be best facilitated by authors and editors keeping the MeSH terms used by MEDLINE indexers in mind when they compose titles and abstracts.
围产期医学对照试验登记册（英国牛津国家围产期流行病学单位）的存在提供了一个机会，来评估在线检索MEDLINE（一个广泛的书目数据库的例子）的效果。在汇总结果的分析（荟萃分析）中，检索给定领域的所有相关随机对照试验（RCT）很重要。在登记册和MEDLINE文件中查找1966年至1983年期间新生儿高胆红素血症的预防和治疗以及脑室内出血（IVH）预防的RCT报告。主题检索的比较显示，每个文件中都有一些未列出的论文，随后通过作者检索发现这些论文是存在的。在MEDLINE检索中，新手显然比专家效率低，但专家仅找回了MEDLINE中可用的相关高胆红素血症论文的29%，以及已识别的IVH RCT的56%。检索方面的一些不足已通过索引改进得到纠正，例如识别摘要中的文本词的能力，以及添加新的医学主题词（MeSH），如随机分配。作者和编辑在撰写标题和摘要时牢记MEDLINE索引人员使用的MeSH词，将最有助于提高检索效率。
