Comparación de filtros para búsquedas de estudios cualitativos sobre prevención de caídas en ancianos

Abstract

Introduction: the increase in qualitative literature and synthesis research in the socio-health field show the difficulty of identifying it through bibliographic searches in databases. Strategies have been developed to speed up these searches, highlighting the methodological filters, which have proved to be an effective tool. Objectives: to evaluate the effectiveness of search strategies based on filters for the recovery of qualitative studies on the risk of falls in the elderly. Method: a search was conducted on fall prevention in the elderly, manually classifying the results as quantitative or qualitative. Literature was reviewed identifying existing qualitative filters. The filters proposed by Shaw, Slater, Mahtani and the Hedges Group were combined to identify qualitative studies. These filters were applied by replicating the initial search in the five databases. For a variety of reasons, only the effectiveness of filters in MEDLINE was compared against the initial manual classification. Results: a global analysis was performed and 430 studies were identified in MEDLINE. The search in which filters were applied obtained 2064 references. The filters with the highest sensitivity were those of the Hedges Group (28.77%) and the SHAW-TL filter (23.98%), and those with the highest precision were Mahtani (22.03%) and SLATER-TL (18.13%). Conclusion: the rescued filters present discrete sensitivity and precision for the location of qualitative studies. In order for filters to become an even more powerful recovery tool, it is necessary to increase consensus in the indexation of qualitative studies, structure summaries and further description in titles.