Box 2.

—Effective strategies for searching Medline for prognostic studies³

• Best single term
• “Explode cohort studies” (MeSH)
• Best complex search strategy with the highest sensitivity
• “incidence” (MeSH)
• or “explode mortality” (MeSH)
• or “follow-up studies” (MeSH)
• or “mortality” (subheading)
• or “prognos*” (text word)
• or “predict*” (text word)
• or “course” (text word)