Home>Systematic Review-Search Strategies

Search Strategies for Systematic Reviews


Quick Filters

Ovid Medline (Advanced Search):

Limits Section on main search page---> check off Top Reviews (Cochrane)

Pubmed:

Clinical Queries Section--> Search using Systematic Reviews search box


Advanced Search

Hedge for Systematic Reviews

The following search strategy will enable you to extract systematic reviews from Ovid Medline. Enter this search strategy manually into Ovid Medline (Advanced Search) and save the strategy (this is possible only when you login under your University of Alberta CCID). Execute the search (i.e., "Open Saved Search") whenever you wish to extract systematic reviews of a topic, then search for the topic as you would search for other research articles in that domain.
1: meta-analysis.pt,ti,ab,sh.
2: 1 or (meta anal$ or metaanal$).ti,ab,sh.
3: (methodol$ or systematic$ or quantitativ$).ti,ab,sh.
4: 3 adj (review$ or overview$ or survey$).ti,ab,sh.
5: (medline or embase or index medicus).ti,ab.
6: ((pool$ or combined or combining) adj (data or trials or studies or results)).ti,ab.
7: 3 or 4 or 5 or 6
8: 7 and review.pt,sh.
9: 2 or 8
Note: $ or * is the truncation symbol in Ovid Medline

Please refer to the other Ovid Medline strategies on this web site for articles on Therapy/Prevention, Diagnosis, Prognosis and Harm/Etiology. Develop your strategy and execute it on Ovid Medline. Combine the results with your previously run hedge for systematic reviews. Note that most systematic reviews so far have been prepared for studies of therapy or prevention.

 


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