trials to date suggest potential for improving persistence with medication taking thus improving treatment outcomes and reducing fracture risk .
More precise measurement of medication taking and promoting fidelity to a precisely defined intervention protocol may lead to better assessment of impact on clinical ly important outcomes
BACKGROUND despite availability of effective treatments for osteoporosis , impact on fracture rates may be suboptimal because of failure to adhere to recommended anti-resorptive therapy .
OBJECTIVE to identify r and omized controlled trials ( RCTs ) evaluating interventions intended to improve persistence with anti-resorptive therapy for treating women with osteoporosis or osteopenia .
Developing optimal search strategies for detecting clinically sound treatment studies in EMBASE.
OBJECTIVE The ability to accurately identify articles about therapy in large bibliographic data bases such as EMBASE is important for research ers and clinicians . Our study aim ed to develop optimal search strategies for detecting sound treatment studies in EMBASE in the year 2000 . METHODS H and search es of journals were compared with retrievals from EMBASE for c and i date search strategies . Six trained research assistants review ed fifty-five journals indexed in EMBASE and rated articles using purpose and quality indicators . C and i date search strategies were developed for identifying treatment articles and then tested , and the retrievals were compared with the h and - search data . The operating characteristics of the strategies were calculated . RESULTS Three thous and eight hundred fifty articles were original studies on treatment , of which 1,256 ( 32.6 % ) were method ologically sound . Combining search terms revealed a top performing strategy ( r and om:.tw . OR clinical trial:.mp . OR exp health care quality ) with sensitivity of 98.9 % and specificity of 72.0 % . Maximizing specificity , a top performing strategy ( double-blind:.mp . OR placebo:.tw . OR blind : .tw . ) achieved a value over 96.0 % , but with compromised sensitivity at 51.7 % . A 3-term strategy achieved the best optimization of sensitivity and specificity ( r and om:.tw . OR placebo:.mp . OR double-blind:.tw . ) , with both these values over 92.0 % . CONCLUSION Search strategies can achieve high performance for retrieving sound treatment studies in EMBASE
trials to date suggest potential for improving persistence with medication taking thus improving treatment outcomes and reducing fracture risk .
More precise measurement of medication taking and promoting fidelity to a precisely defined intervention protocol may lead to better assessment of impact on clinical ly important outcomes
BACKGROUND despite availability of effective treatments for osteoporosis , impact on fracture rates may be suboptimal because of failure to adhere to recommended anti-resorptive therapy .
OBJECTIVE to identify r and omized controlled trials ( RCTs ) evaluating interventions intended to improve persistence with anti-resorptive therapy for treating women with osteoporosis or osteopenia .