The addition of the controlled vocabulary terms returned 2870 studies compared with 303 on free text terms alone. Nevertheless, the flexibility of the OVID/Embase search software enabled some refinements to be made to the free text terms. These were carried out in stages to see the effect of each change. The text terms were restricted to titles and abstracts only, the adjacency function was used then free text terms and were removed. Also, to find comparative studies that “planning” “assessment” assess change of treatment plan or outcome, a combined phrase was used as follows; or chang*) and (outcome* or The result was a return of 1483 with “((compar* plan*))”. no loss of studies which met the inclusion criteria. This was considered to represent an acceptable balance of specificity and sensitivity. The final OVID/Embase search details are shown in Table 10. The results are shown in Table 11. Table - final pilot OVID/Embase search Search strategy Final Exists in OVID/ Embase Embase database Number of results returned 1483 Meet inclusion criteria Diniz 2008 Yes Fortin 2011 No ᵡ Frei 2004 Yes Reddy 1994 Yes Schropp 2001 Yes Schropp 2011 Yes Do not meet inclusion criteria Chen 2008 Yes Dreiseidler 2009 Yes Yes Jacobs 1999 1 – Jacobs 1999 2 Yes – Yes Schropp 2009 Vazquez 2008 Yes ᵡ Webber 1999 Yes Returned in search
The addition of the controlled vocabulary terms returned 2870 studies compared with 303 on free text terms alone. Nevertheless, the flexibility of the OVID/Embase search software enabled some refinements to be made to the free text terms. These were carried out in stages to see the effect of each change. The text terms were restricted to titles and abstracts only, the adjacency function was used then free text terms “planning” and “assessment” were removed. Also, to find comparative studies that assess change of treatment plan or outcome, a combined phrase was used as follows; “((compar* or chang*) and (outcome* or plan*))”. The result was a return of 1483 with no loss of studies which met the inclusion criteria. This was considered to represent an acceptable balance of specificity and sensitivity. The final OVID/Embase search details are shown in Table 10. The results are shown in Table 11. Table - final pilot OVID/Embase search Search strategy Final OVID/ Embase Exists in Embase database Number of results returned 1483 Meet inclusion criteria Diniz 2008 Yes Fortin 2011 ᵡ No Frei 2004 Yes Reddy 1994 Yes Schropp 2001 Yes Schropp 2011 Yes Do not meet inclusion criteria Chen 2008 Yes Dreiseidler 2009 Yes Jacobs 1999 – 1 Yes Jacobs 1999 – 2 Yes Schropp 2009 Yes Vazquez 2008 ᵡ Yes Webber 1999 Yes Returned in search
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