title: Searches for randomized controlled trials of drugs in MEDLINE and EMBASE using only generic drug names compared with searches applied in current practice in systematic reviews.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  It is unclear which terms should be included in bibliographic searches for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of drugs, and identifying relevant drug terms can be extremely laborious. The aim of our analysis was to determine whether a bibliographic search using only the generic drug name produces sufficient results for the generation of informative systematic reviews (SRs).
  
  
  METHODS
  We conducted a retrospective analysis of relevant references included in SRs of drugs. We determined the proportion of references identified by a simplified technique consisting of a systematic search for RCTs in MEDLINE and EMBASE via the search interface Ovid and using only the truncated generic drug name in all search fields. We calculated aggregated sensitivity and also evaluated the unidentified references.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Forty-eight SRs contained 873 primary publications, of which we found 829 in MEDLINE and 757 in EMBASE ("gold standard"). The simplified search identified 823 of the 829 MEDLINE references (sensitivity 99.3%) and 754 of the 757 EMBASE references (99.6%). Ultimately, only three references could not be found by additional searches.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Our findings indicate that when searching for RCTs of drugs in MEDLINE and EMBASE, a search using the truncated generic drug name in all fields produces sufficient results.
authors.affiliation: Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Healthcare, Im Mediapark 8, 50670, Cologne, Germany.
authors.forename: Siw
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Waffenschmidt
authors.affiliation: Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Healthcare, Im Mediapark 8, 50670, Cologne, Germany.
authors.forename: Charlotte
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Guddat
mesh_terms: D057225:Data Mining / Q000379:methods*; D016206:Databases, Bibliographic / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D004341:Drug Evaluation; D004348:Drug Labeling / Q000145:classification / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D016568:Drugs, Generic / Q000145:classification*; D016239:MEDLINE / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D009323:Natural Language Processing; D016032:Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D012196:Review Literature as Topic; D018875:Vocabulary, Controlled
chemical_list: D016568:Drugs, Generic
keywords: comprehensive literature search for SRs; generic drug name; information storage and retrieval; randomized controlled trials as topic; review literature as topic; search strategy