There are over 12 million citations in MEDLINE. When searching for your topic, you may find hundreds or even thousands of articles, but only a small number of these will be RCTs or EBMR articles. In order to maximize your opportunity to identify these relevant RCTs or EBMR articles, you will need to be particularly conscientious about your search strategy. Searching for evidence requires a slightly different approach from what you might normally try if you were simply looking for a few relevant articles.
Consider this clinical question: The clinical question itself is very detailed, specifying the patient age, gender, and addressing several variables/scenarios.
Let's think about our search strategy...
Among female patients over age 65 with unstable gait and atrial fibrillation, would anticoagulation with warfarin, when compared with no anticoagulation, lead to lower mortality and morbidity from stroke? Does the benefit exceed the increased risk of CNS bleeding associated with a fall?
