Many of the following evidence-based-medicine databases require a Tufts username or Library Login ID for access.
ACP Journal Club
Produced by the American College of Physicians,
it screens the top clinical journals to identify studies
that are both methodologically sound and clinically relevant.
The result is an enhanced abstract of the chosen article
and a commentary on its value for clinical practice. For
further details, see Ovid's Field
ACP Smart Medicine
Produced by the American College of Physicians, this evidence-based collection of disease modules can be searched, or browsed alphabetically or by organ system on Stat!Ref. It also contains the AHFS Drug Information Essentials
Produced by BMJ Publishing Group. It summarises the current state of knowledge
and uncertainty about the prevention and treatment of common
or important clinical conditions, based on thorough searches
and appraisal of the literature. It is neither a textbook
of medicine nor a set of guidelines. It describes the best
available evidence from systematic reviews, RCTs and observational
studies where appropriate. If there is no good evidence
it says so.
Clinical Queries in MEDLINE (NLM)
Intended for clinicians, this specialized search
uses the following four filters to search the MEDLINE
database: therapy, diagnosis, etiology, or prognosis.
Users can search for systematic reviews and meta-analyses
on a search topic, as well as search by sensitivity
Cochrane Central Register
of Controlled Trials
A bibliography of controlled trials identified by the Cochrane
Collaboration and others, as part of an international effort
to hand search the world's journals and create an unbiased
source of data for systematic reviews. It includes reports
published in conference proceedings and in many other sources
not currently listed in MEDLINE or other bibliographic databases.
For further details, see Ovid's Field
Cochrane Database of Systematic
Its full-text articles reviewing the effects of healthcare
are highly structured and systematic. To minimize bias evidence
is included or excluded on the basis of explicit criteria.
Data are often combined statistically (with meta-analysis)
to increase the power of the findings of numerous studies,
each too small to produce reliable results individually.
For further details, see Ovid's Field
The Cochrane Library
"The Cochrane Library is a collection of databases that contain high-quality, independent evidence to inform healthcare decision making. Cochrane Reviews represent the highest level of evidence on which to base clinical treatment decisions."
Database of Abstracts of Reviews
Includes structured abstracts of systematic reviews from
around the world, which have been critically appraised by
reviewers at the NHS Centre for Reviews and Dissemination
at the University of York, England. DARE also contains references
to other reviews which may be useful for background information.
For further details, see Ovid's Field
- DynaMed (EBSCO)
A reference tool created by physicians for use primarily at the 'point-of-care', DynaMed is updated daily and monitors the content of over 500 medical journals and systematic-review databases. Its references link to some free articles but otherwise to PubMed records. To access the full text of our licensed articles, open another browser window, login to our customized PubMed, and click on the blue icon for Tufts Electronic Holdings.
Health Technology Assessment (NHS)
Contains information on healthcare technology assessments and is produced by the International Network of Agencies for Health Technology Assessment and the Centre for Reviews and Dissemination. The database contains systematic reviews, ongoing and completed research based on trials, questionnaires and economic evaluations. Where possible, the research type is stated in the title or abstract.
NHS Economic Evaluation Database (NHS EED)
Funded by the Departments of Health of England and Wales to assist decision-makers by systematically identifying and describing economic evaluations, appraising their quality and highlighting their relative strengths and weaknesses. Contains over 6000 abstracts of quality- assessed economic evaluations.
Contains abstracts of systematic reviews and randomised
controlled trials relevant to occupational therapy.
Trials have been critically appraised and rated to help
users evaluate their validity and interpretability.
Evidence Database (CEBP)
Developed to give rapid access to bibliographic details
and abstracts of randomised controlled trials and systematic
reviews in physiotherapy. Most trials on the database
have been rated for quality.
Evidence-based medical and dental resources from systematic searches of the internet, reports in the literature, self-reporting by site owners and other recommendations. Because the sites are evaluated by an in-house team of information experts and clinicians and external experts to assess quality and clinical usefulness its search has potential to be more focusd and relevant than a Google or Google Scholar search. Also has separate sections for medical images and patient information leaflets.
Ovid EBM Limits
- EBM Reviews
- Use this limit to narrow an Ovid MEDLINE search to only
those articles that are considered "evidence-based"
- Restricts MEDLINE retrieval to:
- Topic reviews from the Cochrane Database of Systematic
Reviews. Click Ovid Full Text.
- Articles or studies that have been included by
the Cochrane Collaboration when creating a Systematic Review. Click Find It@Tuftsfor links to either full text or print availability of articles; click Topic Review
to read the Cochrane Systematic Review.
- Articles that have been reviewed in the ACP Journal
Club or the Database of Abstracts of Reviews of
Effectiveness (DARE). Click Find It@Tufts for links to either full text or print availability of the article; click Article
Review to read the full text of the review.
- Limits to these databases may be applied separately
or in combinations on the More Limits screen.
- Systematic Reviews
- A systematic review is a
summary of the medical literature that uses explicit
methods to perform a thorough literature search and
critical appraisal of individual studies and that uses
appropriate statistical techniques to combine these
valid studies. Systematic reviews are not all equal,
and quality issues are important. (Bandolier
- This limit on Ovid MEDLINE's More Limits screen under Subject Subsets retrieves citations identified as systematic
reviews, meta-analyses, reviews of clinical trials,
evidence-based medicine, consensus-development conferences,
guidelines, and citations to articles from journals
specializing in review studies of value to clinicians.
- For further details see the
NLM search strategy.
- Clinical Queries
- This set of limits, adapted from PubMed's, is found
on the More Limits screen.
- These search filters retrieve with sensitivity
(the broadest net), specificity (the narrowest),
or optimized strategies.
- For details, see Ovid's translation of Brian
MEDLINE Publication Types
The following limits are located on Ovid MEDLINE's More Limits screen under Publication Types. For a complete list of definitions, see the National
Library of Medicine's Publication
Types: Scope Notes.
- Case Reports
Clinical presentations that may be followed by evaluative studies that eventually lead to a diagnosis. Use this publication type to retrieve case series. According to SE Strauss et al. (Evidence-Based Medicine: How to Practice and Teach EBM, 2005), a case series reports "on a series of patients with an outcome of interest. No control group is involved."
Work consisting of studies using a quantitative method of
combining the results of independent studies (usually drawn
from the published literature) and synthesizing summaries
and conclusions which may be used to evaluate therapeutic
effectiveness, plan new studies, etc. It is often an overview
of clinical trials. It is usually called a meta-analysis
by the author or sponsoring body and should be differentiated
from reviews of literature.
- Randomized Controlled Trial
Work consisting of a clinical trial that involves at least
one test treatment and one control treatment, concurrent
enrollment and follow-up of the test- and control-treated
groups, and in which the treatments to be administered are
selected by a random process, such as the use of a random-numbers
table. Treatment allocations using coin flips, odd-even
numbers, patient social security numbers, days of the week,
medical record numbers, or other such pseudo- or quasi-random
processes, are not truly randomized and a trial employing
any of these techniques for patient assignment is designated
simply a Controlled Clinical Trial.
- Practice Guideline
Work consisting of a set of directions or principles to
assist the health care practitioner with patient care decisions
about appropriate diagnostic, therapeutic, or other clinical
procedures for specific clinical circumstances. Practice
guidelines may be developed by government agencies at any
level, institutions, organizations such as professional
societies or governing boards, or by the convening of expert
panels. They can provide a foundation for assessing and
evaluating the quality and effectiveness of health care
in terms of measuring improved health, reduction of variation
in services or procedures performed, and reduction of variation
in outcomes of health care delivered.
MeSH for EBM Study Types
AND the following MeSH with your search results
to retrieve EBM studies for prognosis and etiology/harm questions.
MEDLINE does not have publication-type limits for these studies.
- Case-Control Studies (explosion includes
Studies which start with the identification of persons with
a disease of interest and a control (comparison, referent)
group without the disease. The relationship of an attribute
to the disease is examined by comparing diseased and non-diseased
persons with regard to the frequency or levels of the attribute
in each group.
- Cohort Studies (explosion includes Longitudinal
Studies, Follow-Up Studies,
and Prospective Studies)
Studies in which subsets of a defined population are identified.
These groups may or may not be exposed to factors hypothesized
to influence the probability of the occurrence of a particular
disease or other outcome. Cohorts are defined populations
which, as a whole, are followed in an attempt to determine
distinguishing subgroup characteristics.
- Prospective Studies
Studies which observe a population for a sufficient number of persons over a sufficient number of years to generate incidence or mortality rates subsequent to the selection of the study group.
- Retrospective Studies
Studies used to test etiologic hypotheses in which inferences about an exposure to putative causal factors are derived from data relating to characteristics of persons under study or to events or experiences in their past. The essential feature is that some of the persons under study have the disease or outcome of interest and their characteristics are compared with those of unaffected persons.
Hints for Searching Ovid MEDLINE
- Limits on both the Main Search page and
the More Limits page are combined with AND.
- On the More Limits page, Ovid combines limits within
the boxes with OR.
- Select several limits in a box with Ctrl+click.