The capture-mark-recapture technique can be used as a stopping rule when searching in systematic reviews.

OBJECTIVE Researchers have no empirically based search stopping rule when looking for potentially relevant articles for inclusion in systematic reviews. We tested a stopping strategy based on capture-mark-recapture (CMR; i.e., the Horizon Estimate) statistical modeling to estimate the total number of articles in the domain of clinical decision support tools for osteoporosis disease management using four large bibliographic databases (Medline, EMBASE, CINAHL, and EBM reviews). STUDY DESIGN AND SETTING Retrospective evaluation of the Horizon Estimate using a systematic review of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) at two levels of article screening: title and abstract (1,246 potentially relevant articles) and full text (42 potentially relevant articles). RESULTS The CMR model suggests that the total number of potential articles was 1,838 for the first level of screening, and 49 for the full-text level. The four databases provided 68% of known articles for the first level of screening and 81% for full-text screening. CONCLUSIONS The CMR technique can be used in systematic reviews to estimate the closeness to capturing the total body of literature on a given topic. More studies are needed to objectively determine the usefulness of Horizon Estimates as a stopping rule strategy for systematic review searching.

[1]  R. Rizza,et al.  Impact of a Diabetes Electronic Management System on the Care of Patients Seen in a Subspecialty Diabetes Clinic , 1998, Diabetes Care.

[2]  A. Alp,et al.  Efficacy of a Self-Management Program for Osteoporotic Subjects , 2007, American journal of physical medicine & rehabilitation.

[3]  I. Olkin,et al.  Improving the quality of reports of meta-analyses of randomised controlled trials: the QUOROM statement , 1999, The Lancet.

[4]  M Alan Brookhart,et al.  Osteoporosis Improvement: A Large‐Scale Randomized Controlled Trial of Patient and Primary Care Physician Education , 2007, Journal of bone and mineral research : the official journal of the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research.

[5]  M. Airey,et al.  Use of the capture-recapture technique to evaluate the completeness of systematic literature searches , 1996, BMJ.

[6]  D. Palli,et al.  Population-based studies of IBD incidence in Italy and capture-recapture methods. , 1997, International journal of epidemiology.

[7]  F. Rodríguez‐Artalejo,et al.  The effectiveness of disease management programmes in reducing hospital re-admission in older patients with heart failure: a systematic review and meta-analysis of published reports. , 2004, European heart journal.

[8]  D. G. Chapman,et al.  THE ESTIMATION OF BIOLOGICAL POPULATIONS , 1954 .

[9]  Edward L. Peterson,et al.  Improving Osteoporosis Screening: Results from a Randomized Cluster Trial , 2007, Journal of General Internal Medicine.

[10]  Joseph Finkelstein,et al.  Development and Implementation of the Home Asthma Telemonitoring (HAT) System to Facilitate Asthma Self-Care , 2001, MedInfo.

[11]  M. Petticrew,et al.  Systematic Reviews in the Social Sciences: A Practical Guide , 2005 .

[12]  Kenneth H. Pollock,et al.  Modeling capture, recapture, and removal statistics for estimation of demographic parameters for fish and wildlife populations : Past, present, and future , 1991 .

[13]  Helen Roberts,et al.  How to Find the Studies: The Literature Search , 2008 .

[14]  Peter Cram,et al.  A randomized trial to assess the impact of direct reporting of DXA scan results to patients on quality of osteoporosis care. , 2006, Journal of clinical densitometry : the official journal of the International Society for Clinical Densitometry.

[15]  Susan Eastwood,et al.  Mejora de la calidad de los informes de los metaanálisis de los ensayos clínicos controlados: el acuerdo QUOROM , 2000 .

[16]  Pamela Royle,et al.  Systematic reviews of epidemiology in diabetes: finding the evidence , 2005, BMC medical research methodology.

[17]  B. Thirion,et al.  Assessment of bibliographic databases performance in information retrieval for occupational and environmental toxicology. , 1998, Occupational and environmental medicine.

[18]  G. Divine,et al.  A Web-based diabetes care management support system. , 2001, The Joint Commission journal on quality improvement.

[19]  Teresa Liu-Ambrose,et al.  HipWatch: osteoporosis investigation and treatment after a hip fracture: a 6-month randomized controlled trial. , 2007, The journals of gerontology. Series A, Biological sciences and medical sciences.

[20]  Lois Shepherd,et al.  The ethics of early stopping rules. , 2005, Journal of clinical oncology : official journal of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.

[21]  J Chilcott,et al.  The role of modelling in prioritising and planning clinical trials. , 2003, Health technology assessment.

[22]  A. Booth.  The number needed to retrieve: a practically useful measure of information retrieval? , 2006, Health information and libraries journal.

[23]  Derrick A Bennett,et al.  Capture-recapture is a potentially useful method for assessing publication bias. , 2004, Journal of clinical epidemiology.

[24]  R R Regal,et al.  Capture-recapture methods in epidemiology: methods and limitations. , 1995, Epidemiologic reviews.

[25]  Jeffrey R Curtis,et al.  Challenges in improving the quality of osteoporosis care for long-term glucocorticoid users: a prospective randomized trial. , 2007, Archives of internal medicine.

[26]  R E LaPorte,et al.  Monitoring the incidence of myocardial infarctions: applications of capture-mark-recapture technology. , 1992, International journal of epidemiology.