Transcript Document
Searching EMBASE Helen Rowlandson Medicines Information Manager Northwick Park Hospital, London Session aims To understand the concepts of a basic search strategy in Embase To describe the EMTREE thesaurus in detail so that you will be able to apply EMTREE to use Embase efficiently To carry out advanced Embase searches Plan What is Embase? Medline v Embase EMTREE NLH Software – searching tools Worked Examples What is EMBASE? Major biomedical & pharmaceutical database European focus >3,500 journals, 70 countries Subject coverage focuses on human medicine Includes drug research, pharmacology, pharmaceutics, health policy and management, public health EMBASE vs Medline MEDLINE USA coverage 1950 onwards Wide medical coverage In process MeSH indexing EMBASE European coverage 1974 onwards Drug/pharmacology focus Updated faster EMTREE indexing 30% overlap between the Medline and Embase Searching EMBASE Controlled vocabulary = EMTREE Uses natural language US spellings rather than British INNs used where possible Acronyms & abbreviations can be used Tree Structure – Hierarchy Indexing: Terms added/Drug names NLH Software Open Internet and type: http://www.library.nhs.uk/Default.aspx Click “Athens users click here” Right click & then click on “create a shortcut” Enter Athens password NLH Software Embase 1974 to date 2 options to search for terms: Thesaurus mapping Browse headings Explode/Focus Explode Includes everything below in the tree structure Focus (Major) Only includes articles where the MeSH heading (descriptor) is the main focus of the article Subheadings Many more subheading options for drugs compared with Medline e.g. diclofenac CAS numbers No real need to use them in EMBASE Most medicines have EMTREE terms – even recently licensed ones If a drug hasn’t got an EMTREE term assigned – use free text Limits Limit searches in similar way to Medline Differences compared with Medline 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 UK 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 autism ?