Searching the clinical adverse effects literature

Golder SP, McIntosh HM, Loke YK. Identifying systematic reviews of the adverse effects of health care interventions. BMC Med Res Methodol 2006 May 8;6(1):22

This recent study published in BMC Medical Research Methodology explores the challenges of constructing one catch-all search strategy for identifying systematic reviews of adverse effects of healthcare interventions.

Interesting that even in these relatively small databases, with a topic that seems fairly well-defined, it was difficult to construct strategies that were precise and sensitive;

The authors conclude that hand searching DARE and Cochrane, the 2 resources that were the focus of this work, is the only way to be certain that you've identified all relevant items.