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Table 4 Candidate search terms for EMBASE

From: Identifying observational studies of surgical interventions in MEDLINE and EMBASE

Search Term

Reference Standard retrieved (N = 191)

Total retrieved (N = 1521)

Sensitivity

Precision

Specificity

Controlled Thesaurus Terms

Case report/

1

348

0.5

0.3

73.9

Clinical trial/

23

131

12.0

17.6

91.9

Cohort analysis/

3

9

1.6

33.3

99.5

Comparative study/

13

39

6.8

33.3

98.0

Controlled study/

79

309

41.4

25.6

82.7

Follow-up study/

45

212

23.6

21.2

87.4

Major clinical study/

106

308

55.5

34.4

84.8

Prospective study/

22

74

11.5

29.7

96.1

Retrospective study/

29

108

15.2

26.8

94.1

Treatment outcome/

88

447

46.1

19.7

73.0

Textwords (.tw)

baseline

16

47

8.4

34.0

97.7

case control$

3

9

1.6

33.3

99.5

case series

27

122

14.1

22.1

92.9

cases

38

201

19.9

18.9

87.7

chang$

51

297

26.7

17.2

81.5

cohort

8

19

4.2

42.1

99.2

compar$ or compara$

90

287

47.1

31.4

85.2

consecutive$

51

142

26.7

35.9

93.2

evaluat$

96

425

50.3

22.6

75.3

follow$

50

259

26.2

19.3

84.3

non compara$ or noncompara$

13

78

6.8

16.7

95.1

non random$ or nonrandom$

19

46

9.9

41.3

98.0

observational

3

20

1.6

15.0

98.7

postoperat$ or post operat$

91

494

47.6

18.4

69.7

preoperat$ or pre operat$

101

418

52.9

24.2

76.2

prospective$

56

195

29.3

28.7

89.5

retrospective$

61

223

31.9

27.3

87.8

reviewed

20

66

10.5

30.3

96.5

EMTREE and/or Textword (.mp)

cohort$

8

21

4.2

38.1

99.0

compare$ or compara$

90

297

47.1

30.3

84.4

follow$

61

325

31.9

18.8

80.1

prospective$

57

200

29.8

28.5

89.2

retrospective$

64

233

33.5

27.5

87.3

postoperat$ or post operat$

123

827

64.4

14.9

47.1

preoperat$ or pre operat$

106

491

55.5

21.6

71.1

  1. Key
  2. / EMTREE term
  3. tw Text word(s) from title and/or abstract fields
  4. mp Term from EMTREE and/or title and/or abstract fields.
  5. $ Truncation symbol