Public Health Department, CHU Lille, Université de Lille, Lille, France.
ULR 2694 Metrics, CERIM, Université de Lille, Lille, France.
J Med Internet Res. 2024 Nov 19;26:e53781. doi: 10.2196/53781.
The massive increase in the number of published scientific articles enhances knowledge but makes it more complicated to summarize results. The Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) thesaurus was created in the mid-20th century with the aim of systematizing article indexing and facilitating their retrieval. Despite the advent of search engines, few studies have questioned the relevance of the MeSH thesaurus, and none have done so systematically.
The objective of this study was to estimate the added value of using MeSH terms in PubMed queries for systematic reviews (SRs).
SRs published in 4 high-impact medical journals in general medicine over the past 10 years were selected. Only SRs for which a PubMed query was provided were included. Each query was transformed to obtain 3 versions: the original query (V1), the query with free-text terms only (V2), and the query with MeSH terms only (V3). These 3 queries were compared with each other based on their sensitivity and positive predictive values.
In total, 59 SRs were included. The suppression of MeSH terms had an impact on the number of relevant articles retrieved for 24 (41%) out of 59 SRs. The median (IQR) sensitivities of queries V1 and V2 were 77.8% (62.1%-95.2%) and 71.4% (42.6%-90%), respectively. V1 queries provided an average of 2.62 additional relevant papers per SR compared with V2 queries. However, an additional 820.29 papers had to be screened. The cost of screening an additional collected paper was therefore 313.09, which was slightly more than triple the mean reading cost associated with V2 queries (88.67).
Our results revealed that removing MeSH terms from a query decreases sensitivity while slightly increasing the positive predictive value. Queries containing both MeSH and free-text terms yielded more relevant articles but required screening many additional papers. Despite this additional workload, MeSH terms remain indispensable for SRs.
大量已发表的科学文章数量的增加增加了知识，但也使得总结结果变得更加复杂。医学主题词表（MeSH）是在 20 世纪中叶创建的，旨在系统地对文章进行索引并方便检索。尽管搜索引擎已经出现，但很少有研究质疑 MeSH 词表的相关性，也没有系统地进行过这种研究。
本研究旨在评估在 PubMed 查询中使用 MeSH 术语对系统评价（SR）的附加价值。
选择过去 10 年在综合医学 4 种高影响力医学期刊上发表的 SR。仅纳入提供了 PubMed 查询的 SR。将每个查询转换为 3 个版本：原始查询（V1）、仅包含自由文本术语的查询（V2）和仅包含 MeSH 术语的查询（V3）。基于灵敏度和阳性预测值，比较这 3 个查询。
共纳入 59 项 SR。抑制 MeSH 术语对 59 项 SR 中 24 项（41%）检索到的相关文章数量有影响。V1 和 V2 查询的中位（IQR）灵敏度分别为 77.8%（62.1%-95.2%）和 71.4%（42.6%-90%）。与 V2 查询相比，V1 查询平均每个 SR 额外提供 2.62 篇相关文献。然而，需要筛选的额外文献数量增加到 820.29 篇。因此，筛选额外收集的一篇文献的成本为 313.09 美元，略高于 V2 查询相关阅读成本的三倍（88.67 美元）。
我们的结果表明，从查询中删除 MeSH 术语会降低灵敏度，同时略微增加阳性预测值。同时包含 MeSH 和自由文本术语的查询可以获得更多相关的文章，但需要筛选许多额外的文献。尽管工作量增加了，但 MeSH 术语仍然是 SR 不可或缺的。
