Medline searching

Search strategy

Compose your question
Analyse the elements of your question. Use the methodological filter grid to help this.
- problem type: most questions are one of 4 categories
  - prognosis studies: methodological filter: best single term to add
    explode subject term cohort-studies
  - therapy studies: methodological filter: best single term to add
    clinical trial as publication type
  - diagnosis studies: methodological filter: best single term to add
    sensitivity as keyword
  - etiology studies: methodological filter: best single term to add
    risk as keyword
- intervention or exposure
- condition
- outcome
- patient group: age range , sex
- publication date and language
- publication type eg: clinical trial, review
Search Ovid Medline on individual headings and keywords separately. Explode (exp) will produce everything below the heading. Focus (*) will pick only the major articles.
- Search by
  - keyword: searches database for the exact words used by you but relied on author using the same words. Useful for
    - a very specific topic
    - to try out diffrent forms of words
    - new concepts
  - author
  - subject: based on MESH headings - articles consistently indexed according to content, not words used by author. Each article is indexed as far down the tree as possible ie: each article will not appear under the generic heading. Can
    - broaden or narrow search
    - add subheadings todefine more precisely
- Add limits
  - age
  - sex
  - publication type
  - date
  - language
Combine the searches using boolean operatives AND and OR.

Medline searching

Methodological filters
Methodological filter grid to help frame questions to construct searches.