Table 1.

Medline Search Strategy Using PubMed.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/advanced

MeSh terms:  1. Surgical Wound Infection/surgery [mh] [mh] denotes a Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) term (“exploded”);

AND (Boolean operator)

Terms for area of interest:  1. Spine [tw]  2. Spinal [tw] [tw] denotes text word;

NOT (Boolean operator)

Terms for exclusion:  1. Cord [ti]  2. Case Reports [ptyp] [ti] denotes title; [ptyp] denotes publication type;

AND (Boolean operator)

Terms for date range:  1. “2000/01/01”[PDat]: “2018/12/31”[PDat] [PDat] denotes publication date;