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PubMedDate not supplied

MEDLINE, cancer-CD, SCI-CD addition on CD-ROM.

Compact Disc Read-Only-Memory, CD-ROM, is a powerful resource which combines the best features of both online and print access to the literature: multiple access points and leisurely browsing (online accessibility without a modem or without its cost). Applied to the MEDLINE database, this technology has created a brand new market, one which is increasingly competitive and therefore evolving rapidly. Five MEDLINE and two non-MEDLINE products are reviewed. The MEDLINE products include: BRS/COLLEAGUE DISC, Compact Cambridge, Ebsco's Core MEDLINE, Online Research System's Compact Med-Base, and SilverPlatter's MEDLINE on CD-ROM. The two other products include: Institute for Scientific Information's SCI CD Edition and SilverPlatter's CANCER-CD. The market is still wide open and the buyer is wise to try before he buys. However, there are great differences between the various packagings of a rather familiar product. In our view, in terms of ease of use, SilverPlatter was the clear winner. Ebsco's product is attractive because of its containment on one CD. Med-Base is the most original and offers special features not found elsewhere. Finally, personal preference is a strong consideration and should not be overlooked.

MEDLARS↗

PubMed1974

MEDLINE evaluation study.

MEDLINE (MEDLARS-ON-LINE) is the new on-line, interactive bibliographic searching system which was recently developed by the National Library of Medicine. The system provides users with lists of bibliographical citations and other information from a three-year file of over 1,250 biomedical journals. A survey testing user reactions was conducted at the University of Virginia Medical Library. The results of the survey are based on replies by 246 users who requested one or more MEDLINE searches between September 1972 and March 1973. The findings indicate that over 93% believe that MEDLINE is a substantial improvement over the traditional methods of searching through the printed indexes. These respondents also stated that the results of MEDLINE searches had assisted them in their clinical or research work, or both. Asked whether they would continue to use MEDLINE after the imposition of user charges on July 1, 1973, about 75% said that they would. The remaining 25% expressed some reservations and doubts. The survey gives reason to believe that with the imposition of user charges the use of MEDLINE will decline.

Information Systems↗

PubMed2005

A nursing qualitative systematic review required MEDLINE and CINAHL for study identification.

OBJECTIVE: Analyze the number and the relevance of references retrieved from CINAHL, MEDLINE, and EMBASE to perform a nursing systematic review. STUDY DESIGN: A search strategy for the review topic was designed according to thesaurus terms. The study analyzes (1) references with abstract, (2) overlap between databases, (3) reference relevance, (4) relevance agreement between experts, and (5) reference accessibility. RESULTS: Bibliographic search retrieved 232 references: 16% (37) in CINAHL, 68% (157) in MEDLINE, and 16% (38) in EMBASE. Of these, 72% (164) were references retrieved with an abstract: 14% (23) in CINAHL, 70% (115) in MEDLINE, and 16% (26) in EMBASE. Overlap was observed in 2% (5) of the references. Relevance assessment reduced the number of references to 43 (19%): 12 (34.3%) in CINAHL, 31 (19.7%) in MEDLINE, and none in EMBASE (Z=-1.97; P=.048). Agreement between experts achieved a maximum Cohen's kappa of 0.76 (P < .005). References identified in CINAHL were the most difficult to obtain (chi(2)=3.9; df=1; P=.048). CONCLUSIONS: To perform a quality bibliographic search for a systematic review on nursing topics, CINAHL and MEDLINE are essential databases for consultation to maximize the accuracy of the search.

Bibliometrics↗

PubMed2002

Nearly half of dental randomized controlled trials published in German are not included in Medline.

Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are considered the most reliable type of clinical intervention studies. However, not all reports of RCTs are accessible in Medline. This can impede the validity of the results of systematic reviews. Ten German-language dental journals were manually searched to locate reports of controlled clinical trials published between 1970 and 2000. The publication type was determined and compared with Medline. Of the 15 777 articles, 210 reports of RCTs and 410 articles of non-randomized controlled clinical trials (CCTs) were identified. Only 56% of the RCTs and 75% of the CCTs are available in Medline. Of the 118 reports of RCTs registered in Medline. 15 are indexed with the correct Publication Type term. Our data suggest that (a) hand-searching plays a valuable role in identifying reports of clinical dental trials, and (b) a literature search in Medline is likely to yield incomplete results.

Dental Research↗

PubMed2002

Medline search validity for randomised controlled trials in different areas of dental research.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the validity of Medline searches for randomised controlled trials in dental research (RCT-Ds), using the medical subject headings (MeSH-terms). DESIGN: The Medline database was searched for randomised controlled trials in dental research (RCT-Ds) published in 1999 and with MeSH-terms corresponding to different areas of dental research. All RCT-Ds were manually examined for relevance to the different areas of dental research and cross-tabulated against the Medline search results. The sensitivity, specificity, positive (precision) and negative predictive values, as well as the accuracy of the search results were calculated. RESULTS: The highest validity in the Medline searches for RCT-Ds was seen for endodontics, followed by orthodontics, whereas the lowest validity was seen for pediatric dentistry and public health dentistry. For pediatric dentistry the MeSH-term searches had too low a sensitivity for adequate location of RCT-Ds. CONCLUSIONS: MeSH-term searches on Medline are a useful tool for rapid location of RCT-Ds in most areas of dental research. However, there is a vast variation in the search validity. More refined search strategies are required to locate RCT-Ds in areas of dental research with low search validity.

Dental Research↗

PubMed1999

The effect of abbreviations on MEDLINE searching.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the effect of the use of abbreviations and acronyms on citation retrieval in MEDLINE searches. METHODS: Twenty common medical abbreviations that retrieved a minimum of 400 citations each in MEDLINE text word searches were studied. Each abbreviation was entered in a MEDLINE subject search to determine whether it mapped to an appropriate medical subject heading (MeSH) term. The MeSH category and the number of citations retrieved were recorded. The abbreviation and its definition were each entered in separate text word searches, and the number of citations retrieved was recorded. Sets were combined to determine the number of identical and unique citations retrieved in the searches. RESULTS: MEDLINE recognized all 20 abbreviations and mapped them to appropriate MeSH headings. MeSH term assignment, however, may be case- and space-sensitive. MeSH term searches retrieved more citations than text word searches for 18 of 20 abbreviations. Comparison of the document sets yielded by each search method revealed a subset of citations common to each. Although all sets retrieved showed overlap, no two were identical. In addition, each citation set contained a proportion of unique documents. CONCLUSION: Retrieval of all unique citations required three searches; subject with abbreviation, text word with abbreviation, and text word with definition. These results have important implications for MEDLINE users.

Abbreviations as Topic↗

PubMed2005

MEDLINE in the UK: pioneering the past, present and future.

This article provides a brief history of the development of the MEDLINE database and its huge impact within the UK, from its inception to the present time. The origins of MEDLINE can be traced back to a collection of books in the US Surgeon General's Office during the American Civil War and John Shaw Billings' decision, during 1867, to make this Library as complete as possible. From these beginnings, Index Medicus was developed in the early years of the 20th century, and electronic versions of the database began with the computerized on-demand search service MEDLARS in 1964 and then via CD-ROM and Internet Grateful Med to the web-based and free-to-all service, PubMed, in 1997. The response to PubMed was immediate and startling with usage increasing from 7 million searches per annum in 1996 to 400 million searches per annum in 2001 and the service continues to improve. MEDLINE providers are now offering mapping of natural language queries to the sophisticated indexing vocabulary (Medical Subject Headings, MeSH) and the provision of specific filters for different types of publication to improve searching efficiency, as well as links to full-text versions of the papers where available. The next steps are likely to involve an increased blurring of database and full-text boundaries, incorporating seamless access to the best available evidence within MEDLINE and a wide range of other information resources within a single search and to an increasing amount of full-text via various open-archive initiatives. As ever, the US National Library of Medicine is in the vanguard of research and further applications of its MEDLINE database for users within the UK will be awaited with great interest.

Grateful Med↗

PubMed2005

Searching the MEDLINE literature database through PubMed: a short guide.

The Medline database from the National Library of Medicine (NLM) contains more than 12 million bibliographic citations from over 4,600 international biomedical journals. One of the interfaces for searching Medline is PubMed, provided by the NLM for free access via the Internet (www.pubmed.gov). Also searchable with the PubMed interface are non-Medline citations, i.e. articles supplied by publishers to the NLM. Direct access to an electronic full text version is also possible if the article is available from a publisher or institution participating in Linkout (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/linkout/). Some publishers provide free access to their journals. Other journals require an online license and are fee based. The following example demonstrates some of the most important search functions in PubMed. We will start out with a fast and simple approach without the use of specific searching techniques and then continue with a more sophisticated search that requires the knowledge of Medline search functions. This example will show how the application of Medline search tools and how the use of the controlled vocabulary of 'Medical Subject Headings' (MeSH) will influence the results in comparison with the fast and simple approach. Let's try to find the best evidence to answer the following question: Is a 30-year-old man with typical acid reflux symptoms for many years (gastroesophageal reflux disease, GERD) more likely to develop esophageal cancer than people without reflux symptoms? This question can be split into several components: -a patient with reflux symptoms (GERD), -esophageal cancer: etiology, risk, -study design for etiology studies: cohort studies, case-control studies.

Database Management Systems↗

PubMed2006

Identifying observational studies of surgical interventions in MEDLINE and EMBASE.

BACKGROUND: Health technology assessments of surgical interventions frequently require the inclusion of non-randomised evidence. Literature search strategies employed to identify this evidence often exclude a methodological component because of uncertainty surrounding the use of appropriate search terms. This can result in the retrieval of a large number of irrelevant records. Methodological filters would help to minimise this, making literature searching more efficient. METHODS: An objective approach was employed to develop MEDLINE and EMBASE filters, using a reference standard derived from screening the results of an electronic literature search that contained only subject-related terms. Candidate terms for MEDLINE (N = 37) and EMBASE (N = 35) were derived from examination of the records of the reference standard. The filters were validated on two sets of studies that had been included in previous health technology assessments. RESULTS: The final filters were highly sensitive (MEDLINE 99.5%, EMBASE 100%, MEDLINE/EMBASE combined 100%) with precision ranging between 16.7%-21.1%, specificity 35.3%-43.5%, and a reduction in retrievals of over 30%. Against the validation standards, the individual filters retrieved 85.2%-100% of records. In combination, however, the MEDLINE and EMBASE filters retrieved 100% against both validation standards with a reduction in retrieved records of 28.4% and 30.1% CONCLUSION: The MEDLINE and EMBASE filters were highly sensitive and substantially reduced the number of records retrieved, indicating that they are useful tools for efficient literature searching.

Databases, Bibliographic↗

PubMed2005

Death, dying and informatics: misrepresenting religion on MedLine.

BACKGROUND: The globalization of medical science carries for doctors worldwide a correlative duty to deepen their understanding of patients' cultural contexts and religious backgrounds, in order to satisfy each as a unique individual. To become better informed, practitioners may turn to MedLine, but it is unclear whether the information found there is an accurate representation of culture and religion. To test MedLine's representation of this field, we chose the topic of death and dying in the three major monotheistic religions. METHODS: We searched MedLine using PubMed in order to retrieve and thematically analyze full-length scholarly journal papers or case reports dealing with religious traditions and end-of-life care. Our search consisted of a string of words that included the most common denominations of the three religions, the standard heading terms used by the National Reference Center for Bioethics Literature (NRCBL), and the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) used by the National Library of Medicine. Eligible articles were limited to English-language papers with an abstract. RESULTS: We found that while a bibliographic search in MedLine on this topic produced instant results and some valuable literature, the aggregate reflected a selection bias. American writers were over-represented given the global prevalence of these religious traditions. Denominationally affiliated authors predominated in representing the Christian traditions. The Islamic tradition was under-represented. CONCLUSION: MedLine's capability to identify the most current, reliable and accurate information about purely scientific topics should not be assumed to be the same case when considering the interface of religion, culture and end-of-life care.

Christianity↗

PubMed2004

Developing optimal search strategies for detecting clinically sound prognostic studies in MEDLINE: an analytic survey.

BACKGROUND: Clinical end users of MEDLINE have a difficult time retrieving articles that are both scientifically sound and directly relevant to clinical practice. Search filters have been developed to assist end users in increasing the success of their searches. Many filters have been developed for the literature on therapy and reviews but little has been done in the area of prognosis. The objective of this study is to determine how well various methodologic textwords, Medical Subject Headings, and their Boolean combinations retrieve methodologically sound literature on the prognosis of health disorders in MEDLINE. METHODS: An analytic survey was conducted, comparing hand searches of journals with retrievals from MEDLINE for candidate search terms and combinations. Six research assistants read all issues of 161 journals for the publishing year 2000. All articles were rated using purpose and quality indicators and categorized into clinically relevant original studies, review articles, general papers, or case reports. The original and review articles were then categorized as 'pass' or 'fail' for methodologic rigor in the areas of prognosis and other clinical topics. Candidate search strategies were developed for prognosis and run in MEDLINE - the retrievals being compared with the hand search data. The sensitivity, specificity, precision, and accuracy of the search strategies were calculated. RESULTS: 12% of studies classified as prognosis met basic criteria for scientific merit for testing clinical applications. Combinations of terms reached peak sensitivities of 90%. Compared with the best single term, multiple terms increased sensitivity for sound studies by 25.2% (absolute increase), and increased specificity, but by a much smaller amount (1.1%) when sensitivity was maximized. Combining terms to optimize both sensitivity and specificity achieved sensitivities and specificities of approximately 83% for each. CONCLUSION: Empirically derived search strategies combining indexing terms and textwords can achieve high sensitivity and specificity for retrieving sound prognostic studies from MEDLINE.

Information Storage and Retrieval↗

PubMed2004

Retrieval comparison of EndNote to search MEDLINE (Ovid and PubMed) versus searching them directly.

Using EndNote version 7.0, the authors tested the search capabilities of the EndNote search engine for retrieving citations from MEDLINE for importation into EndNote, a citation management software package. Ovid MEDLINE and PubMed were selected for the comparison. Several searches were performed on Ovid MEDLINE and PubMed using EndNote as the search engine, and the same searches were run on both Ovid and PubMed directly. Findings indicate that it is preferable to search MEDLINE directly rather than using EndNote. The publishers of EndNote do warn its users about the limitations of their product as a search engine when searching external databases. In this article, the limitations of EndNote as a search engine for searching MEDLINE were explored as related to MeSH, non-MeSH, citation verification, and author searching.

Database Management Systems↗

PubMed2006

Age-specific search strategies for Medline.

BACKGROUND: Many clinicians and researchers are interested in patients of a specific age (childhood, geriatrics, and so on). Searching for age-specific publications in large bibliographic databases such as Medline is problematic because of inconsistencies in indexing, overlapping age categories, and the spread of the relevant literature over many journals. To our knowledge, no empirically tested age-specific search strategies exist for Medline. OBJECTIVE: We sought to determine the retrieval characteristics of age-specific terms in Medline for identifying studies relevant for five clinical specialties: adult medicine, geriatric medicine, pediatric medicine, neonatal medicine, and obstetrics. METHODS: We compared age-specific search terms and phrases for the retrieval of citations in Medline with a manual hand search of the literature for 161 core health care journals. Six experienced research assistants who were trained and intensively calibrated read all issues of 161 journals for the publishing year 2000. In addition to classifying all articles for purpose and quality, study participants' ages were also recorded. Outcome measures were sensitivity, specificity, precision, and accuracy of single and combination search terms. RESULTS: When maximizing sensitivity, the best sensitivity and specificity achieved with combination terms were 98% and 81.2%, respectively, for pediatric medicine, 96.4% and 55.9% for geriatric medicine, 95.3% and 83.6% for neonatal medicine, 94.9% and 64.5% for adult medicine, and 82% and 97.1% for obstetrics. When specificity was maximized, all disciplines had an expected decrease in sensitivity and an increase in precision. Highest values for optimizing best sensitivity and specificity were achieved in neonatal medicine, 92.5% and 92.6%, respectively. CONCLUSION: Selected single terms and combinations of MeSH terms and textwords can reliably retrieve age-specific studies cited in Medline.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1997

Nurses' MEDLINE usage and research utilization.

This exploratory study in the field of nursing informatics examined the usage of information technology, namely on-line access to MEDLINE in clinical setting, by a convenience sample of 121 nurses from a large university hospital. A descriptive correlational design was used. Guided by the conceptual frameword of Nurse-Computer Interaction and based on variables set forth in the Theory of Reasoned Action, the study tested hypotheses regarding attitudinal and normative influences on reported use of on-line bibliographic retrieval systems. It was also hypothesized that using MEDLINE coild increase and improve nurses' adoption of nursing research findings. Multiple regression analyses were conducted on nurses' responses to survey questions to test hypotheses-that those who register more favorable attitudes towards nursing research would have a higher reported use of the MEDLINE system. Findings were significant and supported the hypothesis that nurses' attitudes towards research influenced MEDLINE usage. Findings also indicated that MEDLINE usage was significantly related to nurses' research utilization.

Adult↗

PubMed2000

[Which language will MEDLINE speak in the next millennium?].

OBJECTIVES: To analyze the trends in the prevalence of the languages used in Medline, since its creation up to the present time, for the overall indexed articles in this database and those specifically related to the field of Urology. The results are extrapolated to determine the trend over the next 15 years. METHODS: The Pubmed page on Internet (http:www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/factsheets/nlm. html) and the Medline database (OldMedline 1960-1965 and current Medline 1966-1999) were accessed to determine the total number of indexed articles and the distribution by year, language and country. The same method was applied for articles specifically pertaining to the field of Urology. RESULTS: Overall, English accounts for 75% of the nearly 10 million articles indexed in Medline since its creation. The prevalence of the English language has grown steadily since 1966 when it already accounted for 53% of these indexed articles up to 89% in 1999, for a yearly increase of 1%. Similar results were found for the articles specifically pertaining to the field of Urology. The number of the indexed articles in the English language has grown to almost 400% since 1966, whereas those written in other languages have dropped by 40%. In some countries like Holland, Germany or Japan, most of the articles are published in English. CONCLUSIONS: If the current trend continues, all the articles indexed in the Medline database will comprise only those written in the English language by 2014.

Forecasting↗

PubMed2002

Pilot study optimizing MEDLINE queries in an automated disease management telemedicine system.

Clinicians encounter many medical questions while providing outpatient medical care. A significant number of these questions can be answered using MEDLINE; however it has proven to be difficult to incorporate MEDLINE into routine clinical workflow and for clinicians to generate well constructed MEDLINE queries. This study however hypothesized that that well-constructed MEDLINE queries could be semi-automatically generated by an application named LitButton which was incorporated into the TeleWatch telemedicine system. The LitButton application was then prospectively evaluated in a pilot study by four nurse case managers (NCM) who monitored sixty-eight outpatients for three weeks. During this period the NCMs used the LitButton application sixteen times, and they subjectively reported in real-time that they obtained an answer in 56% of the cases, but that none of the successful information retrieval events resulted in a change in a patient's clinical management. The small number of LitButton events and lack of clinical impact was likely due to the fact that the LitButton function was designed to search MEDLINE for treatment related information; however the NCMs had limited medical decision making responsibilities. As a result there was a mismatch between the user's information needs and the system capabilities.

Case Management↗

PubMed1992

Performance appraisal of online MEDLINE access routes.

OBJECTIVE: To compare the performance and cost of 11 online MEDLINE systems with MEDLINE at Elhill. DESIGN: Comparative study. SYSTEMS: Eleven online daytime systems commercially available in North America offering the MEDLINE database. MEASURES: Number of relevant citations, number of irrelevant citations, proportion of searches producing no relevant citations and cost per relevant citation were analyzed for each system. Relevance and cost for each system were compared with direct searching of MEDLINE through NLM for librarian and clinician search strategies for 18 clinical questions. The citations retrieved by both strategies were pooled and rated for relevance on a 7-point scale. RESULTS: Numbers of relevant and irrelevant citations and cost per relevant citation were higher for clinician searches than librarian searches, reflecting the higher total number of citations retrieved by the clinician approaches. A lower proportion of clinician searches produced no relevant citations than librarian searches. CONCLUSIONS: Eleven daytime MEDLINE systems performed similarly in terms of retrieval and cost within similar searching groups. Clinicians, however, tended to capture larger overall retrievals resulting in higher numbers of relevant and irrelevant citations than librarians.

CD-ROM↗

PubMed2006

How to identify randomized controlled trials in MEDLINE: ten years on.

OBJECTIVE: The researchers sought to assess whether the widely used 1994 Cochrane Highly Sensitive Search Strategy (HSSS) for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in MEDLINE could be improved in terms of sensitivity, precision, or parsimony. METHODS: A gold standard of 1,347 RCT records and a comparison group of 2,400 non-trials were randomly selected from MEDLINE. Terms occurring in at least 1% of RCT records were identified. Fifty percent of the RCT and comparison group records were randomly selected, and the ability of the terms to discriminate RCTs from non-trial records was determined using logistic regression. The best performing combinations of terms were tested on the remaining records and in MEDLINE. RESULTS: The best discriminating term was "Clinical Trial" (Publication Type). In years where the Cochrane assessment of MEDLINE records had taken place, the strategies identified few additional unindexed records of trials. In years where Cochrane assessment has yet to take place, "Randomized Controlled Trial" (Publication Type) proved highly sensitive and precise. Adding six more search terms identified further, unindexed trials at reasonable levels of precision and with sensitivity almost equal to the Cochrane HSSS. CONCLUSIONS: Most reports of RCTs in MEDLINE can now be identified easily using "Randomized Controlled Trial" (Publication Type). More sensitive searches can be achieved by a brief strategy, the Centre for Reviews and Dissemination/Cochrane Highly Sensitive Search Strategy (2005 revision).

Abstracting and Indexing↗