Table 3.

Search strategy

SPICE categories	Search terms*
Patient population: adults with dementia or cognitive impairment	1. Dementia.mp.
	2. Alzheimer.mp
	3. exp Dementia/
	4. exp Alzheimer Disease/
	5. 1 or 2 or 3 or 4
	6. exp Cognition Disorders/
	7. Cognitive impairment.mp.
	8. Cognitive function*.mp.
	9. exp mental retardation/
	10. 6 or 7 or 8 or 9
	11. 5 or 10
Intervention: pain assessment	12. (Assess$ adj5 pain).mp.
	13. (Measur$ adj5 pain).mp.
	14. (Scale$ adj5 pain).mp.
	15. (Rating adj5 pain).mp.
	16. exp Pain Measurement/
	17. exp Pain/di
	18. *Pain Measurement/mt
	19. exp *Pain Measurement/
	20. (Pain adj3 tool$).mp.
	21. 12 or 13 or 14 or 15 or 16 or 17 or 18 or 19 or 20
	22. 11 and 21
Limited to study design: reviews	23. meta-analysis.mp.
	24. meta-analysis.pt.
	25. review.pt.
	26. search:.tw.
	27. 23 or 24 or 25 or 26
	28. 22 and 27

*mp, pt, tw are abbreviations identifying specific fields in the OVID™ MEDLINE database – e.g. mp = title, abstract, original title, name of substance word, subject heading word, keyword heading word, protocol supplementary concept, rare disease supplementary concept, unique identifier. The / after each term is the OVID™ MEDLINE convention for a MESH term; the ‘exp’ abbreviation refers to the automatic expansion of a MeSH term to its sub-headings.