Article type
Year
Abstract
Background: one of the greatest challenges today is the large amount of information available, especially in health sciences. Databases have been created with the aim of gathering and organizing all the content in some subjects. However, one single database cannot reach all scientific publications around the world. In health sciences, the biggest database is MEDLINE. However, most of the publications in Spanish and Portuguese are not indexed there, especially those regarding epidemiological and local public health policies. The two most important databases covering these languages are Latin America and Caribbean Literature in Health Sciences (LILACS) and Índice Bibliográfico Espanhol de Ciências da Saúde (IBECS in Spanish). Both are available at the Virtual Health Library (VHL) website (www.bvsalud.org).
Objectives: to teach a step-by-step tutorial on how to perform an advanced search using the Cochrane acronym for Patient, Intervention, Comparison and Outcome (PICO) strategy, focused on the VHL interface for an electronic search in LILACS and IBECS.
Methods: PICO is the four main elements to formulate a search strategy to answer a clinical question.
Other resources that must be mastered by the researcher are the use of the boolean operators (AND, OR, AND NOT/NOT) and controlled terms. Boolean operators are used to intersect, add or exclude a search term. MeSH is used in MEDLINE but VHL also considers DeCS (Descritores em Ciências da Saúde) terms mainly for Portuguese and Spanish. For example, if we want to know if the best treatment for an ischaemic leg ulcer in a person with diabetes is endovascular revascularization or open surgery revascularization, we would build the PICO strategy as follows:
P: diabetic patient with atherosclerotic lower limb ulcer
I: endovascular revascularization
C: open surgery revascularization
O: limb salvation and ulcer cicatrization
For each one of these fields, we need to use all possible terms that can be used to describe them. For example, the 'P' can be found in articles as diabetic foot OR diabetic complications AND atherosclerosis; diabetes mellitus AND atherosclerosis; and so on. See Figure.
Results: using the PICO set above, on 23 April 2019, we ran a search in VHL obtaining 1366 references, of which, 32 registers are indexed in LILACS, 7 in IBECS, 1308 in MEDLINE and 19 in other databases. In addition, none of the 39 registers of LILACS/IBECS databases was presented in MEDLINE results.
Conclusions: it seems that the number of references is irrelevant compared to the total, but their importance relies on the presentation of local reality and that the results from LILACS/IBECS are not included in commonly used databases, such as MEDLINE. A really comprehensive electronic search should include a LILACS/IBECS search strategy.
Patient or healthcare consumer involvement: this knowledge impacts clinical practice, offering another source of information, improving access to the best practice available in the literature.
Objectives: to teach a step-by-step tutorial on how to perform an advanced search using the Cochrane acronym for Patient, Intervention, Comparison and Outcome (PICO) strategy, focused on the VHL interface for an electronic search in LILACS and IBECS.
Methods: PICO is the four main elements to formulate a search strategy to answer a clinical question.
Other resources that must be mastered by the researcher are the use of the boolean operators (AND, OR, AND NOT/NOT) and controlled terms. Boolean operators are used to intersect, add or exclude a search term. MeSH is used in MEDLINE but VHL also considers DeCS (Descritores em Ciências da Saúde) terms mainly for Portuguese and Spanish. For example, if we want to know if the best treatment for an ischaemic leg ulcer in a person with diabetes is endovascular revascularization or open surgery revascularization, we would build the PICO strategy as follows:
P: diabetic patient with atherosclerotic lower limb ulcer
I: endovascular revascularization
C: open surgery revascularization
O: limb salvation and ulcer cicatrization
For each one of these fields, we need to use all possible terms that can be used to describe them. For example, the 'P' can be found in articles as diabetic foot OR diabetic complications AND atherosclerosis; diabetes mellitus AND atherosclerosis; and so on. See Figure.
Results: using the PICO set above, on 23 April 2019, we ran a search in VHL obtaining 1366 references, of which, 32 registers are indexed in LILACS, 7 in IBECS, 1308 in MEDLINE and 19 in other databases. In addition, none of the 39 registers of LILACS/IBECS databases was presented in MEDLINE results.
Conclusions: it seems that the number of references is irrelevant compared to the total, but their importance relies on the presentation of local reality and that the results from LILACS/IBECS are not included in commonly used databases, such as MEDLINE. A really comprehensive electronic search should include a LILACS/IBECS search strategy.
Patient or healthcare consumer involvement: this knowledge impacts clinical practice, offering another source of information, improving access to the best practice available in the literature.
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