RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 A search strategy to identify studies on the prognosis of work disability: a diagnostic test framework
JF BMJ Open
JO BMJ Open
FD British Medical Journal Publishing Group
SP e006315
DO 10.1136/bmjopen-2014-006315
VO 5
IS 5
A1 Rob Kok
A1 Jos A H M Verbeek
A1 Babs Faber
A1 Frank J H van Dijk
A1 Jan L Hoving
YR 2015
UL http://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/5/5/e006315.abstract
AB Objective Searching the medical literature for evidence on prognosis is an important aspect of evidence-based disability evaluation. To facilitate this, we aimed to develop and evaluate a comprehensive and efficient search strategy in PubMed, to be used by either researchers or practitioners and that will identify articles on the prognosis of work disability.Methods We used a diagnostic test analytic framework. First, we created a reference set of 225 articles on the prognosis of work disability by screening a total of 65 692 titles and abstracts from10 journals in the period 2000–2009. Included studies had a minimum follow-up of 6 months, participants in the age of 18–64 with a minimum sick leave of 4 weeks or longer or having serious activity limitations in 50% of the cases and outcome measures that reflect impairments, activity limitations or participation restrictions. Using text mining methods, we extracted search terms from the reference set and, according to sensitivity and relative frequency, we combined these into search strings.Results Both the research and the practice search filter outperformed existing filters in occupational health, all combined with the Yale-prognostic filter. The Work Disability Prognosis filter for Research showed a comprehensiveness of 90% (95% CI 86 to 94) and efficiency expressed more user-friendly as Number Needed to Read=20 (95% CI 17 to 34).Conclusions The Work Disability Prognosis filter will help practitioners and researchers who want to find prognostic evidence in the area of work disability evaluation. However, further refining of this filter is possible and needed, especially for the practitioner for whom efficiency is especially important.