PubMed for AnaesthesiaMay 26th, 2010

Robin FeatherstoneClinical Medicine Librarianrfeathe@uwo.ca

Slides: www.slideshare.net/featherr

Website: www.lib.uwo.ca/programs/anesthesiaandperioperativemedicine/

Refresher: What’s in PubMed?

• PubMed as supplied by publisher‑• PubMed in process ‑• PubMed indexed for MEDLINE ‑• PubMed • PubMed – OLDMEDLINE (1947 – 1965)

Which citations would you find with a MeSH search?

MeSH 101

Why is MeSH important?

Agenda: 4 Scenarios & 4 Tools

• The Review– Advanced Search

• The Clinical Question– Clinical Queries

• The Regular Update– E-mail updates in MyNCBI

• The Bibliographic Analysis– GoPubMed

1. The Review

• You have to find EVERY article on a particular topic

• You are assisting a research team or writing an article for publication

Scenario

You are hired by a faculty researcher who is conducting research on magnesium following brain injury. They ask you to find every RCT published on the subject in the last five years.

Quick search

Comprehensive search

Comprehensive search query

Search strategy for a review

1. State the topic 2. Identify individual concepts3. Search each concept separately

– Make sure you are using MeSH terms– Consider synonyms, related terms, variant endings and

spellings

4. Combine search sets5. Evaluate results and modify the search strategy as

needed6. Apply limits

2. The Clinical Question

You need to answer a question at the point of care to: – Support a clinical decision– Answer a patient’s question

Scenario

A colleagues asks which has fewer postoperative risks: tranexamic acid or aprotinin?

Quick search

Clinical query search

Clinical Question Strategy

• Use Clinical Queries in PubMed to find the best studies to answer your question

Enter your keywords and select the type of question that you want to answer

3. The Regular Update

• You want to stay up to date on the latest publications, but don’t have time to run regular searches

Scenario

Your area of research interest is postoperative pain in laparoscopic surgery and you want to stay up to date on the very latest publications.

Quick search

Regular Update Strategy

• Start an account with PubMed (MyNCBI)– Set up your search to run automatically and have

the results sent to your email

Setting up an alert

• Select MyNCBI or “Sign In” to your account

• Run your search • Select “Save Search”

• Name your search• Set up your e-mail update preferences

4. The Bibliographic Analysis

• You need an overview of scholarly activity within your field

Quick search

GoPubMed: www.gopubmed.org/

Recap

1. Do all PubMed citations have MeSH headings? 2. How can you limit your search to find only

therapeutic studies? 3. Which website will analyze PubMed results?4. What tool will show you how PubMed

interpreted your search terms?5. How do you get PubMed to send email alerts

of the latest publications in your field?

Robin FeatherstoneClinical Medicine Librarianrfeathe@uwo.ca

Slides: www.slideshare.net/featherr

Website: www.lib.uwo.ca/programs/anesthesiaandperioperativemedicine/