A systematic search and appraisal of the relevant literature was conducted by electronic searching techniques, snowball sampling and correspondence with field specialists.
Reference list and hand-searching supplemented electronic searching.
Electronic searching yielded 3,412 references.
Electronic searching identified 298 publications, of which 84 satisfied the inclusion criteria; 24 were excluded at data extraction.
We will attempt to identify additional relevant trials using the following methods: 1. Searching in the Sexually Transmitted Infections (STI) Cochrane Review Group's Specialised Register, which includes RCTs and controlled clinical trials, from 1944 to 2012, located through: Electronic searching in MEDLINE, EMBASE and CENTRAL.
It is about the power of electronic searching.
In addition to electronic searching, reference list checking, involvement of experts and citation searching is being used to identify evidence.
Relevant studies published until September 2009 were identified by systematically electronic searching Ovid Medline, EMBASE and ISI Web of Knowledge databases and by cross-referencing.
Electronic searching means that no relevant paper is likely to go unread, but narrowing the definition of "relevance" risks reducing the cross-fertilisation of ideas that sometimes leads to big, unexpected advances.
Electronic searching of a single database (PubMed) was undertaken in 15th February 2017.
All titles and abstracts retrieved by electronic searching were independently assessed by two review authors (GC and JB).
