Table 1.

PubMed search strategy^a for heterogeneity in advanced non-small-cell lung cancer

Search number	Search terms
Disease terms
1	“Carcinoma, Non-Small-Cell Lung”[MeSH] AND (“stage IV”[Text Word] OR “stage III/IV”[Text Word] OR “metastatic”[Text Word] OR “metastasis”[Text Word] OR “metastases”[Text Word] OR “advanced”[Text Word])
Study types
2	“Observational”[Text Word] OR “Cohort Studies”[MeSH] OR “Retrospective Studies”[MeSH] OR “Cross-Sectional Studies”[MeSH] OR “Clinical Trial, Phase III”[Publication Type] OR “Clinical Trial, Phase IV”[Publication Type] OR “Controlled Clinical Trial”[Publication Type] OR “Randomized Controlled Trial”[Publication Type] OR “Meta-Analysis”[Publication Type] OR “systematic review”[Text Word]
Terms related to prognostic/predictive
3	“Prognosis”[MeSH] OR predict*[Text Word] OR prognos*[Text Word] OR “interaction”[Text Word] OR “multivariate”[Text Word] OR heterogen*[Text Word] OR mediat*[Text Word] OR moderat*[Text Word]
Exclusionary terms
4	“Early Diagnosis”[MeSH] OR “Early Detection of Cancer”[MeSH] OR “Molecular Epidemiology”[MeSH] OR “genotype”[Title] OR “gene”[Title] OR “genes”[Title] OR “molecular”[Title] OR “Costs and Cost Analysis”[MeSH] OR “Economics”[MeSH] OR “economics”[Subheading] OR “Cost-Benefit Analysis”[MeSH] OR “Cost of Illness”[MeSH] OR “Cost Savings”[MeSH] OR “Health Care Costs”[MeSH] OR “staging”[Title] OR (“radiotherapy”[Text Word] NOT “chemotherapy”[Text Word]) OR “adjuvant”[Title] OR “early-stage”[Title] OR “neo-adjuvant”[Title] OR neoadjuvant”[Title] OR detect*[Title] OR “preoperative”[Title] OR “pre-operative”[Title] OR (“stage I”[Text Word] NOT “stage IV”[Text Word]) OR prevent*[Title]
Combined searches
5	(#1 AND #2 AND #3) NOT #4
6	“Animals”[MeSH] NOT “Humans”[MeSH]
7	“Case Reports”[Publication Type] OR “Comment”[Publication Type] OR “Letter”[Publication Type] OR “Editorial”[Publication Type]
8	#5 NOT (#6 OR #7)

Note:

^aSearch limited to studies published between January 2000 and November 2010.