Establishing database of RCT reports published in Chinese with English citation and PICO to support Cochrane reviewers within the Collaboration

Tags: Poster
Zhang M, Li Y, Li J, Liu G, Phil W, Fento M

Background: There are four leading Chinese databases Chinese Biomedical

Disk (CBM), Chinese Medical Current Contents, Chinese National

Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), and Chinese Academy of Traditional

Medicine Database) which are not routinely cross indexed in databases

routinely searched by the authors of Cochrane reviews or Cochrane

Review Groups. The joint proposal for establishing a database of RCT

reports in Chinese with English versions of the citations and abstract for

each record have been submitted to The Cochrane Collaboration.

Objectives: To supplement current records of CENTRAL with RCT reports

published in Chinese and to help Cochrane reviewers and review groups

incorporating these into systematic reviews. Methods: First, to identify

the RCTs within the databases listed above and incorporate these into a

single database which can be accessed internationally, with eventual

publication in CENTRAL. Second, the identified RCTs are linked to an

English language record providing the citation and PICO form. Three

working groups were organized (searching, translation and database

establishing) to develop and modify searching strategies; to identify the

claimed RCT; to translate the Chinese abstract into a PICO form; and to

incorporate the English PICO and citation into MeerKat. All people

involved were trained and worked with the input from the UK Cochrane

Centre. Results: First, pilot searching was tried on two journals for CBM

and CNKI databases to develop searching strategy. The results were

compared with that of handsearching to meet the criteria of specificity

and sensitivity. About 6000 citations and abstracts from CBM were

located, of which over 2000 were identified as potential RCTs and

translated. The results were transformed into the MeerKat database.

Conclusions: Challenges and problems: first, some studies published in

China that are reported as ‘randomized trials’ are not, in fact, truly

randomised, and it will take much time to evaluate them at the first glance

when we have hundreds of searching results; second, how to

develop a comprehensive searching strategy with specificity and sensitivity

is still being explored, e.g, duplication in two Chinese databases: CBM and

CNKI; third, translation problems with no full citation, or missing

information in the original abstracts, or multi-pronunciation for Chinese

authors, etc.