Information retrieval strategy in functional gastrointestinal disorders with emphasis on the sensitivity and precision

BACKGROUND: To determine functional gastrointestinal disorder (FGID) aspects, there should be a guideline to retrieve documents in this area for researchers with different levels of knowledge about these disorders. the objective of this study was conducted in order to compile different terms related to different categories of these disorders and to determine the sensitivity of them. MATERIALS AND METHODS: To set a proper search, some strategies were used to enhance the precision and sensitivity. After preparing the list of terms according to some sources such as thesauruses, Rome classification, related review articles, and so on, they were divided into seven categories and the queries in each of them were searched on the Scopus. RESULTS: The sensitivity for each of the terms in categories were calculated, and the highest values were as follow: FGIDs with 189 queries (“digestive* system* function* disorder*”), irritable bowel syndrome with 142 queries (“irritable colon*”), functional constipation with 13 queries (“function* disorder*” and constipation), functional diarrhea with 16 queries (“function* disorder*” and diarrhea), functional bloating with 29 queries (“function* disorder*” and bloat*), Functional Dyspepsia with 29 queries (“functional dyspep*”), and neurogenic bowel with 7 queries (“neurogenic bowel*”). CONCLUSION: Given the values calculated for sensitivity, and considering the type of study, in order to retrieve documents in this area, it is necessary to apply all or part of the proposed queries to the search strategy.