Literature search strategy

A librarian (CAP) completed the search on May 19, 2020 with no restriction on publication date to reflect all available published articles up to that date. PubMed, Cumulated Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), and PsycINFO search engines were selected because of their comprehensiveness and usefulness for health-related literature. Search strategy included the MeSH terms and key words: (“Menopause” OR menopaus*) AND (palpitation* OR heart racing OR heart pounding OR irregular heart). The search term “palpitations” was too specific to locate pertinent articles. Additional searches were done by searching for articles that employed menopausal-symptom assessment tools from the three search engines. Tools searched included the Menopause Rating Scale (Heinemann) [20], Greene Climacteric Symptom Rating Scale [21], Midlife Women’s Symptom Index [22], Holte/Mikkelsen Menopause Checklist [23], Hunter’s Women’s Health Questionnaire [24], Neugarten and Kraines’ Symptom Checklist [25], Study of Women’s Health Across the Nation (SWAN) menopausal symptom checklist, Menopause Symptoms List [26], the Blatt Kupperman Index [27–29], Menopause Symptoms Checklist [26], and Menopausal-Specific Quality of Life (MENQOL) [30].

We organized the review using Covidence.org, a structured program available through a university subscription. We used Covidence features to remove duplicates from searches, track the progress of multiple raters during screening and full-text review, and calculate inter-rater reliabilities. A separate literature search or review protocol was not published. The review did not meet the definition of human subject research and did not require institutional review board approval.