Search Strategies for a Rapid Review of Surgery, Malpractice, and Litigation

To identify studies to include or consider for this rapid review, the review team worked with a librarian (CE, TN) to develop detailed search strategies for each database. The PRISMA extension was followed for search reporting. The librarian (CE, TN) developed the search for PubMed and translated the search for every database searched. The PubMed search strategy was reviewed by the research team to check for accuracy and term relevancy. All final searches were peer-reviewed by another librarian (BF) following the Peer Review of Electronic Search Strategies (PRESS checklist). The search was limited by date from 1994 to present, to English language when available, and to an adult population. The databases included in this search are PubMed (NLM) and Cochrane Central (Wiley) using a combination of keywords and subject headings. A grey literature search included medRxiv (https://www.medrxiv.org) and Europe PMC (https://europepmc.org/). All final searches were performed on July 15, 2024, by the librarian (CE) and were fully reported on July 15, 2024. The full search strategies as reported by the librarian are provided in Appendix (___). They are also archived at [DOI]. A summary of the search results: PubMed (NLM) from 1994 to 07/15/2024 (4,584 results) Cochrane Central (Wiley) from 1994 to 07/15/2024 (133 results) Europe PMC (https://europepmc.org/) from 1994 to 07/15/2024 (32 results) MedRxiv (https://www.medrxiv.org/) from inception to 07/15/2024 (44 results) The search resulted in 4,793 studies. 22 duplicate studies were found and omitted by the librarian [CE] using EndNote 21 and following the Bramer Method duplicate identification strategy. This resulted in 4,728 records to screen from databases and 43 records to screen from other methods, resulting in 4,771 records.