Ovid Technologies Field Guide

Cochrane Methodology Register (CLCMR)

The Evidence Based Medicine Reviews Collection

Scope

Evidence Based Medicine Reviews Collection

A patient asks a clinician, "Does vitamin C prevent the common cold? Are there effective therapies to treat a cold once you have one?" Although these questions are common, they are not always easy to answer. Medical knowledge is advancing rapidly, and the literature that reports new findings is expanding by almost half a million articles every year.

In the past, a clinician might seek answers to these questions within a textbook. But textbooks are updated infrequently, only every 3-5 years. And a new, definitive study might be published in today's medical journals, but not appear in the most recent textbooks.

The clinician might call an infectious disease specialist. But specialists are very busy, and may not have time to answer such questions.

The clinician might perform a traditional search in a medical database, such as MEDLINE. Unfortunately, a search using the MeSH term "common cold" yields over 1,400 articles written in the last 30 years. Finding a relevant article might take as long as 30 minutes or more.

But today, with Ovid's Evidence-Based Medicine Reviews (EBMR), answering clinical questions is a whole lot easier. Using Ovid's MEDLINE, a clinician can enter the term "common cold," select the EBM Reviews limit, and in seconds, a small number of high-quality articles appear that discuss prevention and treatment of the common cold.

Some of the articles retrieved have met rigorous inclusion criteria by the international Cochrane Collaboration, and then have been used as the basis for a systematic topic review. Clicking on the Topic Review link retrieves the Cochrane Review "Vitamin C for the Common Cold" which analyzes and synthesizes over 30 of the best clinical trials on the subject.

Other articles in the result set have been the subject of an evidence-based article review by the editorial staff of Best Evidence (a joint project of the American College of Physicians and BMJ Publishing Group) or by the National Health Services (NHS) Centre for Reviews and Dissemination at the University of York, England. Clicking on the Article Review link retrieves the enhanced abstract of the article together with commentary about the article's relevance to clinical practice.

So, the result from using Ovid's EBMR: the most comprehensive answer in less than a minute. EBMR helps clinicians to find the best answer to clinical questions in the least amount of time.

The Cochrane Methodology Register is a database of studies relevant to the methods of systematic reviews of healthcare and social interventions.

The database includes journal articles, book chapters, conference proceedings, conference abstracts and reports of ongoing methodological research. Relevant records are identified primarily through a program of handsearching undertaken by the UK Cochrane Centre. The register aims to include all published reports of empirical methodological studies that could be relevant for inclusion in a Cochrane methodology review, along with comparative and descriptive studies relevant to the conduct of systematic reviews of healthcare interventions.

The Cochrane Methodology Register contains over 9,000 bibliographic references to controlled trials in health care. The content of the Cochrane Methodology Register is being constantly expanded upon as a direct result of an extensive handsearching program and the development of a series of search strategies in MEDLINE and EMBASE to identify relevant reports. This activity is funded by the National Health Service Research and Development Methodology Programme in England.

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General Information

Producer
	The Cochrane Collaboration Home Page: http://www.cochrane.org
Segments
	CLCMR
	This database does not support Ovid's AutoAlerts. If you want to create a reusable search strategy, save the search as a Permanent Saved Search instead. See the Ovid Web Gateway User Manual for details about permanent saved searches. Saved search information also appears in the Ovid Web Gateway Help System.
All Fields Display/Print Fields
	Abstracts (AB)	Edition (EY)	Place of Publication (CP)
	Accession Number (AN)	Editor (ED)	Publication Type (PT)
	Author (AU)	Keywords (KW)	Source (SO)
	Comments (CM)	Local Mesages (LM)	Title (TI)
	Correspondence Address (AD)	Original Title (OT)	Update Flag (UF)
Default Fields for Display/Print Fields
	Abstracts (AB)	Edition (EY)	Place of Publication (CP)
	Accession Number (AN)	Editor (ED)	Publication Type (PT)
	Author (AU)	Keywords (KW)	Source (SO)
	Comments (CM)	Local Mesages (LM)	Title (TI)
	Correspondence Address (AD)	Original Title (OT)	Update Flag (UF)
Elements of the Source (SO) Field
	Conference Date (CD)	Issue/Part (IP)	Publisher (PB)
	Conference Location (CL)	Journal Name (JN)	Volume (VO)
	Edition (EY)	Page (PG)	Year of Publication (YR)

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Searching the CLCMR Fields

The following list is sorted alphabetical by field alias. Click a field name to see the description and search information.

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The following list is sorted alphabetically by the two-letter label, and includes the relevant alias, at least one example for all searchable CLCMR fields, and a description of the field.

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Advanced Searching

You can use special words and symbols to combine search terms and refine a search. For efficient searching, use the most appropriate operator from the list below to combine search terms. For more information on these and other searching techniques, including command line syntax searching, refer to the Ovid Gateway Help.

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CLCMR Limits

• Abstracts: A limit to Abstracts restricts retrieval to documents that include abstracts.
• Review Articles: Selecting this CLCMR limit restricts results to documents that are review of a subject.
• Latest Update: A limit to Latest Update retrieves only those records that were added to CLCMR with the most recent update.
• Publication Type: Select this CLCMR limit to restrict your results to a particular type of publication, such as case report, letter or clinical trial.
• Publication Year: A limit to Publication Year restricts retrieval to documents that were published in the year range that you choose.

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Changing to this Database from Another Database

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CLCMR Producer Copyright Information

The materials contained herein are proprietary to the publishers and/or individual copyright holders and may only be used by authorized users of the subscribing institutions for internal or personal research. Authorized users may (i) print data obtained from searches and make limited copies of such printed search results, (ii) download data obtained from searches and (iii) retransmit search results electronically or otherwise to a limited number of authorized users at the same institution. Authorized users are precluded from: (i) copying, duplication, redistribution, retransmission, publication, transfer or commercial or other exploitation of the databases or the contents thereof, except as permitted herein or pursuant to user guidelines of the individual copyright holders, (ii) preparation of derivative works or incorporation of the databases or contents thereof in any other work or system; (iii) downloading of the contents in their entirety or lengthy sequence. Authorized users are referred to the individual copyright holder and/or to the copyright holder's usage guidelines within this database for additional restrictions which may be imposed by the copyright holder.

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Field Guide Updated April 4, 2006

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