Search Strategies for Simulation and Surgery Literature

Search strategies for retrieving articles on simulation and surgery from three major biomedical databases: MEDLINE All (Ovid), Embase (Ovid), and Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (Ovid). The strategies are documented in RTF files, which also list the number of results retrieved for each database. It was authored by Monique Clar and last updated in February 2026.

Use Cases

• Analyze the structure and keyword combinations of search strategies for MEDLINE All, Embase, and Cochrane to understand systematic review methodology.
• Compare the number of results retrieved by each database-specific search strategy to assess database coverage for simulation and surgery topics.
• Extract and standardize search terms from the RTF files to build a controlled vocabulary for literature retrieval in medical simulation.

Strengths

• Covers three major biomedical databases (MEDLINE All, Embase, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews).
• Includes the number of results retrieved for each database, providing a performance metric for the strategies.
• Authored by a named individual (Monique Clar) and hosted by an academic repository (Borealis Harvested Dataverse).

Limitations

• The core data (search strategies and result counts) are contained in RTF files, which are not machine-readable without parsing.
• The dataset scope is limited to the specific concepts of simulation and surgery, not generalizable to other medical topics.
• No information is provided on the date range of the literature searches or the currency of the retrieved results.

Provenance

Source

Borealis Harvested Dataverse

Collection Method

Search strategies compiled for retrieving articles from specified databases.

Freshness

Last updated on 2026-02-07.