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Chapter II. Methods
Cancer Society, American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, Australian Health
Ministers Advisory Council, Canadian National Workshop on Screening for Cancer of the
Cervix, the National Strategic Plan for Early Detection and Control of Breast and Cervical
Cancer, and the UK National Health Service Cervical Cancer Screening Program; (3) identified
recent relevant systematic reviews in the medical literature; and (4) consulted with USPSTF
liaisons for this topic.
Inclusion/Exclusion Criteria
We established overall inclusion and exclusion criteria a priori. Tables 3 and 4 present
results of the search strategy with specific search terms.
Our search strategy, developed with the assistance of the RTI-UNC EPC research
librarian who specializes in evidence-based literature review is described in Table 4. Using a
selection of sentinel publications relevant to each key topic that were captured in the original
broad search (Table 3), we specified searches that would provide focused identification of
articles related to each key question. However, further specifying exhaustive searches for each
question resulted in oversight of articles likely to be relevant as judged by missing sentinel
articles. Key Question 1 about older age, older age and interval, and hysterectomy was the most
difficult search to focus. As a result, we took an exhaustive approach to categorizing all articles
obtained in the larger search. This process is described in detail below.
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