The assessment group may choose to specify in its report what type of further research is needed to improve the basis for future assessments regarding the pertinent health care problem and intervention. If Profuse Evidence Retrieved When a literature search turns up several hundreds or thousands of citations, it is likely that the inclusion criteria are too broad. Further narrowing the search to articles about the effects on quality of life in RCTs of drug treatment of hypertension in humans would identify about 40 citations. Inverse searching with articles known to be pertinent will be helpful in these instances. Effective literature searching is a special skill that is built upon experience.
All databases have certain peculiar design attributes and terminologies.
Some indexing terms and their hierarchical relationships may not be consistent with actual current usage, especially terms pertaining to new interventions and methods. Search commands that were thought to be carefully focused may retrieve surprisingly irrelevant citations.