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Searching EMBASE Janet West Principal Pharmacist Medicines Information Southern General Hospital NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde What WhatisisEMBASE? EMBASE? Major biomedical & pharmaceutical database European focus Subject coverage focuses on human medicine – also includes related disciplines e.g health economics, hospital management Background Background >11 million records 1974 onwards >5000 journals >70 countries ~580,000 records added annually ~80% records have author written abstract EMBASE <>EMBASE Medline Medline vs EMBASE indexes more drug related literature EMBASE covers more European & Far Eastern journals Medline covers more US journals EMBASE is updated faster – average = 10 15 working days for full article to appear c.f. 6-8 weeks for Medline (30% within 30 days , 60% within 60 days) Overlap between Medline & Embase = ~30% therefore always search both Make your EMBASE searches effective.. Searching EMBASE Controlled vocabulary = EMTREE Uses natural language e.g. chronic fatigue syndrome [EMBASE] v fatigue syndrome, chronic [Medline] US spellings rather than British e.g. estrogen rather than oestrogen INNs used where possible Acronyms & abbreviations mostly avoided EMTREE Hierarchical tree consisting of: EMTREE is divided into 15 facets (A Q) Largest = facet C & facet D C = physical diseases, disorders and abnormalities D = chemicals and drugs (21,000 terms) Searching EMBASE ‘Explode’ and ‘major’ ~20 descriptive terms applied to each record (sometimes many more) 3 – 5 are given importance (major) Searching EMBASE Dialog NHS interface: – Type in words and map to thesaurus or – Use browse function or – Enter the term EMBASE Using subheadings Many more subheading options for drugs compared with Medline e.g. diclofenac EMBASE Check date term was added Must check when a term was added (in scope note – yellow post-it note) May need to search free text as well to pick up articles before the entry date of that term with these words in e.g. grapefruit juice NB - CARE as may not be a topic of the article Free Text Free text searches also useful when:– there is no appropriate match in the EMTREE thesaurus for your term, – the concept is very new to the literature, or – the concept has a very specific name, such as ‘Waterlow Score’ Trade name searching Drug / device trade names can be searched Articles are indexed with trade names when relevant Useful when searching for comparative info e.g. Slophyllin, Uniphyllin CAS number searching No real need to do this in EMBASE However it is still possible to do – see drop down menu All medicines have EMTREE terms – even recently licensed ones (as far as I can tell!) e.g. duloxetine, rasagiline etc EMBASE limits Limit searches in similar way to Medline Two ways of limiting Less publication type limit options (but see next slide), less age limit options Publication types Publication types have their own facet / tree top of EMTREE terms that are searchable Facet J: types of article or study Build up your search and combine in the usual way (using BOOLEAN) with other search terms Worked example 1 Are there any papers about SSRIs or SNRIs being used in the treatment of Huntington disease? Worked example 2 Are there any articles which discuss using high dose vitamin supplementation to treat autistic disorders ? EMBASE Any questions?