title: Search filters to identify geriatric medicine in Medline.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To create user-friendly search filters with high sensitivity, specificity, and precision to identify articles on geriatric medicine in Medline.
  
  
  METHODS
  A diagnostic test assessment framework was used. A reference set of 2255 articles was created by hand-searching 22 biomedical journals in Medline, and each article was labeled as 'relevant', 'not relevant', or 'possibly relevant' for geriatric medicine. From the relevant articles, search terms were identified to compile different search strategies. The articles retrieved by the various search strategies were compared with articles from the reference set as the index test to create the search filters.
  
  
  METHODS
  Sensitivity, specificity, precision, accuracy, and number-needed-to-read (NNR) were calculated by comparing the results retrieved by the different search strategies with the reference set.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The most sensitive search filter had a sensitivity of 94.8%, a specificity of 88.7%, a precision of 73.0%, and an accuracy of 90.2%. It had an NNR of 1.37. The most specific search filter had a specificity of 96.6%, a sensitivity of 69.1%, a precision of 86.6%, and an accuracy of 89.9%. It had an NNR of 1.15.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  These geriatric search filters simplify searching for relevant literature and therefore contribute to better evidence-based practice. The filters are useful to both the clinician who wants to find a quick answer to a clinical question and the researcher who wants to find as many relevant articles as possible without retrieving too many irrelevant articles.
authors.affiliation: Department of Internal Medicine, section of Geriatric Medicine, Academic Medical Center, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Esther M M
authors.initials: EM
authors.lastname: van de Glind
authors.forename: Barbara C
authors.initials: BC
authors.lastname: van Munster
authors.forename: René
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Spijker
authors.forename: Rob J P M
authors.initials: RJ
authors.lastname: Scholten
authors.forename: Lotty
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Hooft
mesh_terms: D005853:Geriatrics; D006801:Humans; D016247:Information Storage and Retrieval / Q000379:methods*; D016239:MEDLINE; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D014584:User-Computer Interface