title: Agreement between Medline searches using the Medline-CD-Rom and Internet Pubmed, BioMedNet, Medscape and Gateway search-engines.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To compare the information obtained from the Medline database using Internet commercial search engines with that obtained from a compact disc (Medline-CD).
  
  
  METHODS
  An agreement study was carried out based on 101 clinical scenarios provided by specialists in internal medicine, pharmacy, gynaecology-obstetrics, surgery and paediatrics. 175 search strategies were employed using the connector AND plus text within quotation marks. The search was limited to 1991-1999. Internet search-engines were selected by common criteria. Identical search strategies were independently applied to and masked from Internet search engines, as well as the Medline-CD.
  
  
  RESULTS
  3,488 articles were obtained using 129 search strategies. Agreement with the Medline-CD was 54% for PubMed, 57% for Gateway, 54% for Medscape and 65% for BioMedNet. The highest agreement rate for a given speciality (paediatrics) was 78.1% for BioMedNet, having greater -/- than +/+ agreement.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Even though free access to Medline has encouraged the boom and growth of evidence-based medicine, these results must be considered within the context of which search engine was selected for doing the searches. The Internet search engines studied showed a poor agreement with the Medline-CD, the rate of agreement differing according to speciality, thus significantly affecting searches and their reproducibility. Software designed for conducting Medline database searches, including the Medline-CD, must be standardised and validated.
authors.affiliation: Química Farmacéutica, Secretaría Distrital de Salud, Bogotá, D C, Colombia. angelacaror@hotmail.com
authors.forename: Rosa Angela
authors.initials: RA
authors.lastname: Caro-Rojas
authors.forename: Javier H
authors.initials: JH
authors.lastname: Eslava-Schmalbach
mesh_terms: D019992:Databases as Topic; D006801:Humans; D016247:Information Storage and Retrieval; D020407:Internet; D016239:MEDLINE; D039781:PubMed; D012984:Software