Gram 2025

Appraisal of: Gram EG, Kramer BS, Jørgensen KJ, Woloshin S. Gram EG, Kramer BS, Jørgensen KJ, Woloshin S. Trends in use of the new MeSH term "overdiagnosis": A bibliometric review.
Reviewer(s): 

Naila Dracup

Full Reference: 

Gram EG, Kramer BS, Jørgensen KJ, Woloshin S. Gram EG, Kramer BS, Jørgensen KJ, Woloshin S. Trends in use of the new MeSH term "overdiagnosis": A bibliometric review. Health Info Libr J. 2025 Sep;42(3):232-241. doi: 10.1111/hir.70000. Health Info Libr J. 2025 Sep;42(3):232-241. doi: 10.1111/hir.70000 

Short description: 

This study builds on the scoping review carried out Jenniskens et al (2017) that analysed the use of the term ‘overdiagnosis’ across clinical fields within PubMed and reported widespread variation and inconsistency in its application.

Gram et al carried out two PubMed searches: firstly, searching for every publication containing the indexing term with ‘Overdiagnosis’ since it’s introduction in 2021. Secondly, a text word search was carried out for the term. An online randomisation tool was used to select a random 10% of the studies from the text word search that did not also include the indexing term. The searches were carried out in March 2023 and updated in September 2024.

The results were coded to describe the characteristics of the studies not containing the indexing term. 30% were double-coded and disagreement was discussed via consensus. The remaining results were coded by a single reviewer.

Implications for information retrieval

Only 3% of the 5524 citations that the authors identified that mentioned ‘overdiagnosis’ anywhere within the text between 1924 and 2022 were indexed with the MeSH term. 225 results in total included the MeSH term.

• 68.7% of the indexed citations were descriptive studies

• 54.2% of the indexed studies were related to oncology

• 31.2% of the indexed studies contained the topic category ‘screening’

• 23% of the text-word searching results were related to test accuracy (which included test bias, sensitivity, and specificity) compared to 13.2% of the MeSH search results.

• 80.8% of the text-word search results were descriptive studies and 68.7% of the indexed studies

• 6.4% of the text word studies were related to the prevalence of overdiagnosis and 17.7% of the indexed studies

• 73.2% of indexed used the term ‘overdiagnosis’ in accordance with the National Library of Medicine definition vs 49.5% of the text-word results.

• 60.7% of the indexed studies were not reported to be related to ‘overdiagnosis’ but incorrectly indexed: 22% were related to ‘misdiagnosis’, 21.3% described ‘false positives’, 16.4% of the indexed publications were about ‘overtreatment’,

• 25.5% of the free text/ not indexed citations were not reported to be describing ‘overdiagnosis’, 22.0% were related to ‘misdiagnosis’, 7.0% discussed ‘overtreatment’, and 45.5% were reported to be unrelated.

The authors recommend the development of high specificity and sensitivity search filters to improve the discoverability of these studies.

Limitations stated by the author(s): 

The searches were carried out on PubMed only.

Limitations stated by the reviewer(s): 

None

SuRe Info keywords (pre-defined tags):

Diagnostic test accuracy studies

Study Type: 

Systematic bibliographic review

Related Chapters: 

None

Tags: 

• Searching

• PubMed

• Overdiagnosis 

Supplemental publications to the study:

No.