Article type
Year
Abstract
Background: Part of the EU-Practihc project (Pragmatic Randomized Controlled Trials in Health Care http://www.practihc.org) was to identify and survey randomized trials originating from low-and middle-income countries. As part of this initiative bibliographic databases other than the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) have been searched for relevant work.
Objectives: To search systematically the World Health Organization HELLIS Network's Index Medicus for South-East Asia Region (IMSEAR), identify the trials and find if they are disseminated in The Cochrane Library's CENTRAL database.
Methods: We searched the IMSEAR database online (http://www.hellis.org [Accessed November 2005]) using the phrase "randomi$ OR double-blind OR assign$ OR allocate$". We downloaded all records and managed the database within ProCite. After duplicate checking we manually inspected all records for randomized controlled trials/controlled clinical trials (RCTs/CCTs). These records were then sought in the CENTRAL database.
Results: The IMSEAR database contains records from 1980-1995. We found 642 unique records. Of these 558 seem to be RCTs/CCTs. These studies commonly originate from India, Thailand and Indonesia and address issues of infectious diseases, management of pain and heart disease, although many other areas of health care are addressed. We found 156 (28%) of these reports on CENTRAL (2006, Issue 1).
Conclusions: CENTRAL is a considerable resource for those wishing to identify trials. Finding that CENTRAL is far from comprehensive is not new. Trials from other databases covering literature from China, Hungary, India, Korea, Russia and the Ukraine are underrepresented in CENTRAL. Now this part of the South-East Asian literature joins the increasing list. There is a danger that The Cochrane Collaboration is a global network maintaining an increasingly provincial database of trials. Failing to take into consideration these studies may increase random error in the results of Cochrane reviews, or, at worst, may ensure that Cochrane reviews are biased.
Objectives: To search systematically the World Health Organization HELLIS Network's Index Medicus for South-East Asia Region (IMSEAR), identify the trials and find if they are disseminated in The Cochrane Library's CENTRAL database.
Methods: We searched the IMSEAR database online (http://www.hellis.org [Accessed November 2005]) using the phrase "randomi$ OR double-blind OR assign$ OR allocate$". We downloaded all records and managed the database within ProCite. After duplicate checking we manually inspected all records for randomized controlled trials/controlled clinical trials (RCTs/CCTs). These records were then sought in the CENTRAL database.
Results: The IMSEAR database contains records from 1980-1995. We found 642 unique records. Of these 558 seem to be RCTs/CCTs. These studies commonly originate from India, Thailand and Indonesia and address issues of infectious diseases, management of pain and heart disease, although many other areas of health care are addressed. We found 156 (28%) of these reports on CENTRAL (2006, Issue 1).
Conclusions: CENTRAL is a considerable resource for those wishing to identify trials. Finding that CENTRAL is far from comprehensive is not new. Trials from other databases covering literature from China, Hungary, India, Korea, Russia and the Ukraine are underrepresented in CENTRAL. Now this part of the South-East Asian literature joins the increasing list. There is a danger that The Cochrane Collaboration is a global network maintaining an increasingly provincial database of trials. Failing to take into consideration these studies may increase random error in the results of Cochrane reviews, or, at worst, may ensure that Cochrane reviews are biased.