Answer to the Letter to the Editor of Mingbo Tian et al. concerning 'body mass index and risk of surgical site infection following spine surgery: A meta-analysis' by D.Y. Abdallah, M.M. Jadaan and J.P. McCabe; Eur Spine J, doi:10.1007/s00586-013-2890-6

摘要

We would like to respond to the Letter to the Editor concerning our meta-analysis [1].For the electronic search, we used PubMed, which provides a search interface to Medline, and Embase. These two search engines complement each other [2], and, in addition to CENTRAL, contain the largest number of studies according to the Cochrane Handbook of Systematic Reviews of interventions [3]. We did not search CENTRAL, as the focus of our research was on observational studies. The search, supplemented by screening of reference lists, identified 34 studies relevant to our research question, which is not a small number. However, it was not appropriate to pool results from all 34 studies.