PPT Slide
Objectives: Systematic reviews assessing addressing drug therapy often lack information about serious adverse drug reactions (ADRs). Such information is typically found in literature other than that pertinent to drug efficacy, and is difficult to locate. Our objective was to develop a generic search strategy for identifying reports of serious ADRs.
Methods: Serious ADRs were defined as those that are fatal, life-threatening, permanent, or congenital (United States Food and Drug Administration definition). MEDLINE, EMBASE, and PyschLit were searched to identify serious ADRs for nine antidepressant agents. Initially, a very broad list of search terms, including text words such as "serious" and "adverse” were used. Terms specific for ADRs known to occur with the nine agents were not used. A single physician screened citations (title and abstracts) from the broad search to identify those that were possible reports of serious ADRs. Full text of the possible reports of serious ADRs were reviewed to confirm true hits of actual serious ADRs.The MeSH terms of true hits were used to develop various combinations of search terms. These were then tested tested to identify the search strategy that maximized sensitivity and minimized false positives.