Searches were quality assured by a second information specialist before being run. The questions, the study types applied, the databases searched and the years covered can be found in appendix N. The titles and abstracts of records retrieved by the searches were sifted for relevance, with potentially significant publications obtained in full text. These were assessed against the inclusion criteria. During the scoping stage, a search was conducted for guidelines and reports on the websites listed below from organisations relevant to the topic. Guidelines International Network database (www.g-i-n.net) National Guideline Clearing House (www.guideline.gov) National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) (www.nice.org.uk) National Institutes of Health Consensus Development Program (consensus.nih.gov) NHS Evidence Search (www.evidence.nhs.uk). Turning Research into Practice (TRIP (www.tripdatabase.com)) Royal College of General Practitioners (www.rcgp.org.uk) All references sent by stakeholders were considered. Searching for unpublished literature was not undertaken. The NGC and NICE do not have access to drug manufacturers unpublished clinical trial results, so the clinical evidence considered by the committee for pharmaceutical interventions may be different from that considered by the MHRA and European Medicines Agency for the purposes of licensing and safety regulation. 4.2.2 Health economic literature search Systematic literature searches were also undertaken to identify health economic evidence within published literature relevant to the review questions. The evidence was identified by conducting a broad search relating to heart failure in the NHS Economic Evaluation Database (NHS EED) and the Health Technology Assessment database (HTA) with no date restrictions (NHS EED ceased to be updated after March 2015). Additionally, the search was run on Medline and Embase using a health economic filter, from September 2009, to ensure recent publications that had not yet been indexed by the economic databases were identified. 