The Bahrain Branch of the UK Cochrane Centre In Collaboration with Reyada Training & Management Consultancy, Dubai-UAE Cochrane Collaboration and Systematic Review Workshop, February 2007, Dubai - UAE Dr. Zbys Fedorowicz, Dr. Dunia Al Hashimi, Dr. Ahmed Al Asfoor W08

Searching the Cochrane Library

What is The Cochrane Library?  The Cochrane Library is the best single source of reliable evidence about the effects of healthcare. It was designed to supply high quality evidence to inform people providing and receiving care, and those responsible for research, teaching, funding, and administration at all levels.

 The Cochrane Library’s main purpose is to determine if there is evidence for the effectiveness of one treatment over another.  There are no diagnostic reviews yet in the Cochrane Library  The Cochrane Library currently consists of eight databases.  The most popular is the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (CDSR

Starting a search Click on Cochrane Library

Keyword or phrase searching 1. You can perform your search from this screen 2. Type your search statement into the Search phrase box and click Go

Keyword or phrase searching (cont) Or 3. You can choose to do a MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) search

Keyword or phrase searching (cont) 4. To access a complete review of your search, click on The Cochrane Database of Systemic Reviews 5. Click on Complete reviews 6. Then click on the title of the review you require, to access the full text

Combining terms and truncation 1. Use the * to truncate words, e.g. therap* will search for therapies, therapy, and therapeutic. 2. Use brackets to search for terms as a phrase, e.g. (primary care) 3. Combine words using the Boolean operators AND,OR, NOT

Combining terms and truncation (cont) AND will restrict your search by finding records containing both terms e.g. (myocardial infarction) AND angioplasty  OR will broaden your search by finding records containing either term e.g. cancer OR neoplasm  NOT will find records containing one term but not the other, e.g. (breast cancer) NOT female

MeSH searching MeSH is the National Library of Medicine’s Medical Subject Headings. Thesauri are carefully constructed sets of terms, often connected by broader than, narrower than and related links. These links show the relationship between related terms and provide a hierarchical structure that permits searching at various levels of specificity from narrower to broader.

1. Click the MeSH button 2. Type a single word 3. Click Thesaurus 4. Scroll the list of terms and click the term that most clearly defines your search requirements

MeSH Trees 1. The MeSH tree(s) opens displaying the term you choose in red type 2. The list below this displayed term shows the direct children of that term 3. Click Single Term to search the term shown in red only 4. Click Explode all trees to search on an item in red and all of the children of that term 5. Move up and down the tree structure to select more general or more specific terms 6. To move up or down a level in a MeSH tree, click to highlight a term above or below the current one. The new term will be displayed in red.

Limiting a search 1. Click on Refine your search for more precise searching 2. Restrict the search to such options as  date range  updated  commented  title  abstract  author fields

Limit to Review Groups 1. To browse the titles by review group 2. Click on About The Cochrane Collaboration then click Collaborative Review Groups (CRGs)

Displaying and marking search results 1. To view previous search results click on History 2. All previous search results are listed and assigned a search number, e.g. #1, #2, etc. 3. Click on the search you require and the results will be displayed 4. Combine previous searches by adding the search numbers using Boolean Operators, e.g. #5 and #6, or #5 not #2. 5. Click on Clear to delete previous searches from the history

Saving Citations 6. Click View selected to view the selected documents 7. Click Save selected to save the selected documents, then choose Download 8. Documents are saved in a text file. Documents from different databases are saved into separate files. 9. You can clear the results of your search from the database pane by clicking Clear NOTE: Only bibliographic records can be saved. Help Click Help for additional information

Printing, saving citations 1. You can print items found by clicking on the printer friendly version located at the top of each item 2. Individual documents can be saved on your computer. Select the documents to save by clicking the box beside the appropriate titles. 3. Select all documents retrieved within a particular database by ticking the box next to the database name 4. To unselect a title or a database, click the box a second time 5. Clear all the selected documents by clicking Unselect all

Logging Off When you have finished searching, click Exit.

Vitamin C for preventing and treating the common cold." The Cochrane Library, Issue 2, 2002.Oxford.”  One systematic review found that vitamin C slightly reduced the duration of cold symptoms compared with placebo. However, the beneficial effect is small and may be explained by publication bias. Douglas Rm, Chalker EB, Treacy B.

13 RCTs, 17 quasi-randomised or uncontrolled trials Compared vitamin C 1g or more daily versus placebo for naturally acquired colds.

Results It found that vitamin C reduced the duration of symptoms by about half a day compared with placebo.

Harms: The systematic review found no adverse effects associated with vitamin C. Comments: The beneficial effect reported in the review was small and might be explained by publication bias.