Systematic literature search in PubMed : A short introduction

In order to identify current (and relevant) evidence for a specific clinical question within the unmanageable amount of information available, solid skills in performing a systematic literature search are essential. An efficient approach is to search a biomedical database containing relevant literat...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:HNO 2018-08, Vol.66 (8), p.631-648
Main Authors: Blümle, A, Lagrèze, W A, Motschall, E
Format: Article
Language:ger
Subjects:
Databases, Factual
Information Storage and Retrieval
Medical Subject Headings
MEDLINE
PubMed
Search Engine
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:In order to identify current (and relevant) evidence for a specific clinical question within the unmanageable amount of information available, solid skills in performing a systematic literature search are essential. An efficient approach is to search a biomedical database containing relevant literature citations of study reports. In this article, we explain step by step how to perform a systematic literature search via PubMed (MEDLINE) by means of an example research question in the field of ophthalmology. First, we demonstrate how to translate the clinical problem into a well-framed and searchable research question, how to identify relevant search terms and how to conduct a text word search and a search with keywords in MeSH terms. We then show how to limit the number of search results if the search yields too many irrelevant hits and how to increase the number in the case of too few citations. Finally, we summarize all essential principles that guide a literature search via PubMed.
ISSN:1433-0458
DOI:10.1007/s00106-018-0538-x