On 2015 Feb 03, Ashray Gunjur commented:

Thank you Gabe (RG) Boldt for the useful comment. A well designed search strategy is indeed essential for a systematic review to 'net' all relevant studies and thus not represent incomplete or biased results.

Our search strategy for the above systematic review was constructed using the advanced PubMed search engine of the MEDLINE database. All MeSH Terms are as suggested by the PubMed search engine, and were selected by authors as best aligning with our aim- to systematically review the literature on the treatment of adrenal metastases with stereotactic ablative body radiotherapy (SABR), adrenalectomy or percutaneous catheter ablation (PCA) techniques.

We preferred MeSH term searches given the heterogeneity of terminology around therapeutic modalities. For example, SABR is also referred to as stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) and fractionated stereotactic radiation therapy (FSRT). An extensive manual secondary search of bibliographies was completed for all netted manuscripts for inclusion. This resulted in a further 10 relevant articles being found. This thus proves that our original search strategy was not 100% sensitive in 'netting' all relevant articles, however we believe this was accounted for by our extensive secondary search.

Once again, thank you for your comment.

On 2015 Jan 22, Gabe (RG) Boldt commented:

The quality of the literature search in this systematic review is highly suspect!

For example, "body radiotherapies, stereotactic[MeSH Terms]" is not a MeSH. The correct MeSH is radiosurgery[mh].<br> "Ablation, radiofrequency catheter[MeSH Terms]" is not a MeSH. The correct MeSH is Catheter Ablation[mh]. "Adrenal cancer[MeSH Terms] is not a MeSH. The correct MeSH is Adrenal Gland Neoplasms[mh]. Aside from these crucial errors of using the wrong indexed terms, the boolean logic in the search string is confusing, and the nesting of terms in the brackets does not make sense. If you are not searching with the proper Medical Subject Headings and using boolean logic correctly then you are not going to get proper results and this will effect how many research papers you find for your systematic review. Systematic reviews must be conducted with the assistance of a medical librarian who understands the functionality of the databases being searched and can help develop effective search strategies for the systematic review process.

On 2015 Jan 22, Gabe (RG) Boldt commented:

The quality of the literature search in this systematic review is highly suspect!

For example, "body radiotherapies, stereotactic[MeSH Terms]" is not a MeSH. The correct MeSH is radiosurgery[mh].<br> "Ablation, radiofrequency catheter[MeSH Terms]" is not a MeSH. The correct MeSH is Catheter Ablation[mh]. "Adrenal cancer[MeSH Terms] is not a MeSH. The correct MeSH is Adrenal Gland Neoplasms[mh]. Aside from these crucial errors of using the wrong indexed terms, the boolean logic in the search string is confusing, and the nesting of terms in the brackets does not make sense. If you are not searching with the proper Medical Subject Headings and using boolean logic correctly then you are not going to get proper results and this will effect how many research papers you find for your systematic review. Systematic reviews must be conducted with the assistance of a medical librarian who understands the functionality of the databases being searched and can help develop effective search strategies for the systematic review process.