Evidence-based resources and search strategies for orthopaedic surgeons

Identification of information on a specific topic of interest can be a difficult and time-consuming task. The key to successful and time-efficient article identification is to use easily accessible, complete, and most up-to-date information sources and to perform a focused search that minimises hits without missing relevant articles. Pre-appraised articles and databases allowing "pre-filtering" techniques for high level evidence are useful for a quick search for the best available evidence. For a more comprehensive review, a combination of MEDLINE, EMBASE and meeting abstract databases is usually more than sufficient. Full-text publications can be obtained from the Cochrane library and from OVID.