Step in work process
Literature search
Literature Selection
Evidence Grading
Evaluation of Clinical Predictors
Evidence Summary and Draft Recommendation
Recommendation and Guideline development
Final Guideline
Method
PRISMA
In text
CEBM QUADAS
In text
GRADE
Deplhi process
In text
Description/Result
In text
Figures 2 and 3
Additional files 2 and 4: Tables S2 and S4 Additional files 3 and 5: Tables S3 and S5
Additional file 1: Table S1
Table 1
Tables 2, and
Additional files 6-7: Figures S1-2
Figure 1 Flow diagram showing the overall work process.
Search strategy
In order to address the clinical questions we performed two separate systematic reviews of the literature, in accordance to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systema- tic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) statement [22]. Both utilized broad searches of the MEDLINE and EMBASE databases, from 1985 until January 2010 and then complemented to July 2012, using prespecified Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) terms and key words depicted by the task force. MeSH terms were pretested for validity through identification of several key articles. It was deemed unlikely that studies prior to 1985 would be useful considering the wide-scale introduction of CT
scanning around this period. We did not apply any other limitations to the search.
For the first clinical question, the MeSH terms and key- words were; ((head trauma) OR (brain injury) OR (head injury) OR (traumatic head injury) OR (traumatic brain injury)) AND (minimal OR mild OR minor OR moder- ate) AND (management OR predictors OR predictor).
For the second clinical question we used; ((head trauma) OR (brain injury) OR (head injury) OR (traumatic head injury) OR (traumatic brain injury)) AND (minimal OR mild OR minor OR moderate) AND (hospitalization OR hospitalisation OR observation OR admission OR dis- charge OR delayed OR ((normal OR negative OR repeat