Search Strategies: Therapy/Prevention
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Overview of Search Strategies

Quick Search Strategy
Quality Search Strategy

Quick Search Strategy: Type in your search terms, combine the separate lines with AND or OR, and then apply one of the following strategies (note: some of these terms have only been used in Medline since 1991):

Best one-term strategies:

• Use Limit, then Publication Types, then Clinical Trial.

Maximum sensitivity strategy:

• Use Limit, then Publication Types, then Randomized Controlled Trial, or
• use random$ as a Title Word search term.

Maximum specificity strategy:

• Use Limit, then Publication Types, then Meta-analysis.
• Use double AND blind$ as a Title Word search string, or
• use placebo$ as a Title Word search term.

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Quality Search Strategy: The following "hedge", or standardized search strategy, creates a large set of high validity articles on therapy. It may take several minutes to run on Medline.   Note: $ is the truncation symbol on OVID databases.

• clinical trial.pt.
• (clinical or control$ or compar$) adj (trial$ or study or studies).ti,ab,sh.
• 1 or 2
• random$.ti,ab,sh. or randomized controlled trial.pt.
• multicenter study.pt.
• 5 or (multicenter$ or multicentre$ or multi-centre$ or multi-center$).ti,ab,sh.
• 4 or 6
• 3 and 7
• (blind$ or mask$ or placebo$).ti,ab,sh.
• 9 and 3
• 10 and 7

Save this strategy as an expert search.

After entering the hedge, you can search by target disease or disorder.  For maximum sensitivity, use "all subheadings".  For more specificity, use one or more of the following subheadings:  

• Diet Therapy (DH)
• Drug Therapy (DT)
• Prevention & Control (PC)
• Radiotherapy (RT)
• Rehabilitation (RH)
• Surgery (SU)
• Therapy (TH)
• Transplantation (TR)

Alternatively you can search by therapy or intervention.  For maximum sensitivity, use "all subheadings".  For more specificity, use one or more of the following subheadings:  

• Administration and dosage (AD)
• Therapeutic use (TU)
• Pharmacology (PD)

After entering the search strategy shown above, combine the result with the set generated by the hedge using the Boolean operator "AND".

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