Cochrane review authors should seek advice from their Trials Search Co-ordinator throughout the search process.
It is recommended that for all Cochrane reviews CENTRAL and MEDLINE should be searched, as a minimum, together with EMBASE if it is available to either the CRG or the review author.
The full search strategies for each database searched will need to be included in an Appendix of the review, so all search strategies should be saved, and notes taken of the number of records retrieved for each database searched.
CENTRAL contains over 350,000 records from MEDLINE and EMBASE, so care should be taken when searching MEDLINE and EMBASE to avoid unnecessary duplication of effort.
MEDLINE should be searched from 2005 onwards inclusive using one of the revised and updated Cochrane Highly Sensitive Search Strategies for identifying randomized trials in MEDLINE as outlined in Section 6.4.11.1.
EMBASE should be searched for the most recent two years as outlined in Section 6.4.11.2.
Additional studies can be identified in MEDLINE and EMBASE by searching across the years already searched for CENTRAL, by obtaining the full article and by reading, in particular, the methods section.