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Locating and Appraising Systematic Reviews
- Aldemar Araujo Castro, MD;
- Alvaro Nagib Atallah, MD, PhD; and
- Otavio Augusto Camara Clark, MD
The Editors welcome submissions for possible publication in the Letters section. Authors of letters should:
•Include no more than 300 words of text, three authors, and five references
•Type with double-spacing
•Send three copies of the letter, an authors' form signed by all authors, and a cover letter describing any conflicts of interest related to the contents of the letter.
Letters commenting on an Annals article will be considered if they are received within 6 weeks of the time the article was published. Only some of the letters received can be published. Published letters are edited and may be shortened; tables and figures are included only selectively. Authors will be notified that the letter has been received. If the letter is selected for publication, the author will be notified about 3 weeks before the publication date. Unpublished letters cannot be returned.
Annals welcomes electronically submitted letters.
TO THE EDITOR:
In their recent article, Hunt and McKibbon [1] described the strengths and weaknesses of several methods of locating systematic reviews, including the use of such electronic databases as MEDLINE, EMBASE, Best Evidence, and the Cochrane Library.
One electronic database that was not mentioned was Latin America's and the Caribbean's LILACS [2], which indexes regional literature from more than 670 journals. This database contains 168 904 citations of literature published since 1982 and abstracts in English, Portuguese, and Spanish. The U.S. National Library of Medicine's Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) vocabulary is used to index each LILACS citation. LILACS is edited by BIREME (the Latin-American and Caribbean Health Science Information Center) in Sao Paulo City, Brazil. Currently, BIREME is an agency of the Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization.
An unbiased search is the key to a systematic review. To prevent bias and ensure that all relevant data are included in a review, it is fundamental to use multiple sources to identify studies and then to use a systematic approach [3] to select which of those studies to include in the review. Of the 670 journals indexed in LILACS, only 45 overlap with those indexed in MEDLINE. Therefore, using LILACS for identifying randomized, controlled trials and systematic reviews should be part of any search strategy.
The comprehensive search strategy for systematic reviews proposed by Hunt and McKibbon [1] may be adjusted to include publications in Spanish and Portuguese, thus enabling the use of LILACS. The yield will then be 1062 citations (Table 1). When we used LILACS according to the search strategy proposed by the Cochrane Collaboration [3] for randomized, controlled trials, we found 38 261 retrieved citations [4]. The development of a search strategy for LILACS incorporating the three languages is fundamental, and the Brazilian Cochrane Center has been actively working to accomplish this task. The search strategy of all systematic reviews can and should include LILACS as an obligatory database.
Aldemar Araujo Castro, MD
Alvaro Nagib Atallah, MD, PhD
Federal University of Sao Paulo; Sao Paulo, Brazil
Otavio Augusto Camara Clark, MD
State University of Campinas; Campinas, Brazil
The Editors welcome submissions for possible publication in the Letters section. Authors of letters should:
•Include no more than 300 words of text, three authors, and five references
•Type with double-spacing
•Send three copies of the letter, an authors' form signed by all authors, and a cover letter describing any conflicts of interest related to the contents of the letter.
Letters commenting on an Annals article will be considered if they are received within 6 weeks of the time the article was published. Only some of the letters received can be published. Published letters are edited and may be shortened; tables and figures are included only selectively. Authors will be notified that the letter has been received. If the letter is selected for publication, the author will be notified about 3 weeks before the publication date. Unpublished letters cannot be returned.
Annals welcomes electronically submitted letters.
- Copyright ©2004 by the American College of Physicians
