Reviews of Diagnostic Test Accuracy StudiesInformation about this initiative can be found on the Cochrane Collaboration's website at http://srdta.cochrane.org/en/index.html Register of Diagnostic Test Accuracy StudiesWe have successfully submitted a proposal to the Cochrane Collaboration Steering Group for a further three years of funding for the development of the Cochrane-wide study-based register of reports of diagnostic test accuracy studies. This exciting project will ultimately lead to better support for authors and review groups doing Cochrane systematic reviews of diagnostic test accuracy, by providing a clean and comprehensive register of potential studies for their reviews. Searching for diagnostic test accuracy studies (DTAS) is more difficult and time consuming than for reports of randomised controlled trials. This is due to both poor reporting by the authors of these studies, and inconsistent indexing in Medline and other databases, making it difficult to develop search strategies that are both sensitive and specific i.e. that will retrieve all relevant studies without too may irrelevant records 1,2 , 3 This adds an extra burden of time for systematic review authors, who often have to screen many thousands of records to find a few relevant to their reviews. Our objectives for the next three years include:
 We would like to acknowledge the Screening and Test Evaluation Programme (STEP), School of Public Health, University of Sydney, for supporting the development of the register proposal.
1. Doust JA, Pietrzak E, Sanders S, Glasziou PP. 2005. Identifying studies for systematic reviews of diagnostic tests was difficult due to the poor sensitivity and precision of methodologic filters and the lack of information in the abstract. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology 58 (5):444-449 PM: 15845330 2.Leeflang M, Scholten R, Reitsma H, Rutjes A, Bossuyt P. 2006. Use of methodological search filters to identify diagnostic accuracy studies can lead to the omission of relevant studies. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology 59(3):234-40 PM: 16488353 3. Mitchell RL, Rinaldi F, Craig JC. 2005. Performance of published search strategies for studies of diagnostic test accuracy (SDTA) in Medline and Embase [abstract 001]. 13th Cochrane Colloquium, Melbourne, Australia, 22-26 October 2005. Program and abstracts:33 |
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