Table 1 PubMed search strategy

Disease terms

#1

"carcinoma, non small cell lung/drug therapy" [MeSH Terms]

11,135

Design terms

#2

Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic [MeSH Major Topic]

12,361

#3

"randomized controlled trials as topic" [MeSH Terms]

85,095

#4

Random Allocation [MeSH Terms]

76,843

#5

double blind method [MeSH Terms]

118,616

#6

"controlled clinical trial" [Publication Type]

85,642

#7

"randomized controlled trial" [Publication Type]

344,749

#8

"clinical trials as topic" [MeSH Terms]

263,513

#9

"clinical trial" [Publication Type]

709,361

#10

((#2 or #3 or (#4 and (#5 or #8 or #9)) or #6 or #7))

509,729

#11

((randomization and control and clinical and trial))

10,468

#12

(((randomised and control and clinical and trial) or (randomized and control and clinical and trial)))

108,134

#13

((((double or single or triple or treble) and (blind* or mask*) and (random*))))

136,554

#14

(((random and allocat*) and control* and trial))

4,775

#15

(#12 or #13 or #14)

214,899

#16

(#10 or #15)

527,440

#17

(#1 AND #16)

2,065

Exclusion terms

#18

Case report [Title/Abstract]

195,029

#19

Review [Publication Type]

1,765,829

#20

Letter [Publication Type]

794,012

#21

"systematic review" [Title/Abstract]

39,341

#22

"clinical review" [Title/Abstract]

3,144

#23

(#18 OR #19 OR #20 OR #21 OR #22)

2,734,788

#24

(#17 NOT #23)

1,579

Year and language terms

#25

((#24) AND ("1995" [Date - Publication]: "2013" [Date - Publication])) AND English [Language]

1,217