Effectiveness of adverse effects search filters: drugs versus medical devices.

ABSTRACT:

Objective

The study tested the performance of adverse effects search filters when searching for safety information on medical devices, procedures, and diagnostic tests in MEDLINE and Embase.

Methods

The sensitivity of 3 filters was determined using a sample of 631 references from 131 rapid reviews related to the safety of health technologies. The references were divided into 2 sets by type of intervention: drugs and nondrug health technologies. Keyword and indexing analysis were performed on references from the nondrug testing set that 1 or more of the filters did not retrieve.

Results

For all 3 filters, sensitivity was lower for nondrug health technologies (ranging from 53%-87%) than for drugs (88%-93%) in both databases. When tested on the nondrug health technologie

SUBMITTER: Farrah K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4915640 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature