Appraisal of: Katchamart, W., Faulkner A, Feldman B,Tomlinson G, Bombardier C.. PubMed had a higher sensitivity than Ovid-MEDLINE in the search for systematic reviews. J Clin Epidemiol 2011;64: 805-807

Reviewer(s): 
Ingvild Kirkehei
Su Golder
Full Reference: 
PubMed had a higher sensitivity than Ovid-MEDLINE in the search for systematic reviews.
Short description: 

The aim of this study was to compare the performance of Ovid-MEDLINE vs. PubMed for identifying randomized controlled trials of methotrexate (MTX) in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). They measured the performance of each strategies for Ovid-MEDLINE and PubMed for a systematic review of MTX in RA. They found that PubMed retrieved more citations overall than Ovid-MEDLINE. Of 20 citations that met eligibility criteria for the review, Ovid-MEDLINE retrieved 17 (85%) and PubMed 18 (90%). The precision was 0.881% (NNR: 114) for Ovid-MEDLINE vs. 0.884% (NNR:113)  for PubMed.

Limitations stated by the author(s): 

The study was based on the results of searches conducted for one systematic review of one specific topic. The generalisability of the results needs to be tested in other reviews.

Limitations stated by the reviewer(s): 
The authors did not include the Ovid ‘MEDLINE In-Process & Other Non-Indexed Citations’.
Study Type: 
Single study
Related Chapters: 
Service providers and search interfaces
Supplemental publications to the study: 
Semantically equivalent PubMed and Ovid-MEDLINE queries: different retrieval results because of database subset inclusion.
PubMed is slightly more sensitive but more time intensive to search than Ovid MEDLINE
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