Diagnostic value of symptoms of oesophagogastric cancers in primary care: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

Background: Selection of primary care patients for investigation of potential oesophagogastric cancer is difficult, as the symptoms may represent benign conditions, which are also more common.

Aim: To review systematically the presenting features of oesophagogastric cancers in primary care, including open-access endoscopy clinics.

Design And Setting: Systematic review and meta-analysis.

Reporting of factorial trials of complex interventions in community settings: a systematic review.

Background: Standards for the reporting of factorial randomised trials remain to be established. We aimed to review the quality of reporting of methodological aspects of published factorial trials of complex interventions in community settings.

Methods: We searched MEDLINE, EMBASE, PsychInfo and the Cochrane Controlled Trials Register to identify factorial randomised trials of complex interventions in community settings from January 2000 to August 2009.

Developing a sensitive search strategy in MEDLINE to retrieve studies on assessment of the diagnostic performance of imaging techniques.

Purpose: To prospectively develop a search strategy in MEDLINE for identifying studies on the diagnostic performance of any imaging modality, with maximized and minimized retrieval of relevant and irrelevant studies, respectively.

Materials And Methods: Predefined inclusion criteria were used to conduct a hand search of two sets of radiologic journal articles for studies on assessment of the diagnostic performance of imaging techniques. These two sets of articles formed independent derivation and validation record sets for developing and evaluating the search strategy.