Quantity and quality assessment of randomized controlled trials on orthodontic practice in PubMed.
OBJECTIVE
To find current high-quality evidence for orthodontic practice within a reasonable time, we tested the performance of a PubMed search.


METHODS
PubMed was searched using publication type randomized controlled trial and medical subject heading term "orthodontics" for articles published between 2003 and 2007. The PubMed search results were compared with those from a hand search of four orthodontic journals to determine the sensitivity of PubMed search. We evaluated the precision of the PubMed search result and assessed the quality of individual randomized controlled trials using the Jadad scale.


RESULTS
Sensitivity and precision were 97.46% and 58.12%, respectively. In PubMed, of the 277 articles retrieved, 161 (58.12%) were randomized controlled trials on orthodontic practice, and 115 of the 161 articles (71.42%) were published in four orthodontic journals: American Journal of Orthodontics and Dentofacial Orthopedics, The Angle Orthodontist, the European Journal of Orthodontics, and the Journal of Orthodontics. Assessment by the Jadad scale revealed 60 high-quality randomized controlled trials on orthodontic practice, of which 45 (75%) were published in these four journals.


CONCLUSIONS
PubMed is a highly desirable search engine for evidence-based orthodontic practice. To stay current and get high-quality evidence, it is reasonable to look through four orthodontic journals: American Journal of Orthodontics and Dentofacial Orthopedics, The Angle Orthodontist, the European Journal of Orthodontics, and the Journal of Orthodontics.
Shimada
Tatsuo
T
Department of Orthodontics, Tsurumi University, Yokohama, Japan. shimada-t@tsurumi-u.ac.jp
Takayama
Hisako
H
Nakamura
Yoshiki
Y
D055094:Evidence-Based Dentistry; D006801:Humans; D055811:Journal Impact Factor; D009970:Orthodontics / Q000592:standards*; D039781:PubMed; D011785:Quality Assurance, Health Care; D016032:Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic / Q000592:standards*; D012107:Research Design / Q000592:standards; D057386:Search Engine