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The
advance of information technology has made it easy for writers to locate
references to articles
in
the scientific/medical literature in one's home instead of flipping through
thick volume of Index
Medicus
in the library. The MEDLINE database, which has over 9 million articles
indexed by
subject,
is a great place to look and it is now available free of charge at PubMed.
This
section provides useful tips for the efficient use of Pubmed.
a. Locating an author's publication(s). For
this you type the author's surname followed by his initial. For example
if you are looking for the
publications
of Dr. Anthony Norman Other, you type Other AN in the search box. However,
some
authors
may forget to put down their second name so that their publications will
be under Other A
instead.
To cover all the author's publications you may want to use both methods.
The problems
arise
when the surnames are common and to limit the search to relevant articles,
you may type in
the
author's name followed by the subject matter. For example if you are interested
in the article by
Dr.
Michael James Smith on glaucoma; you type Smith MJ Glaucoma in the search
box and to
make
sure that Dr. Smith has not published his article using only his first
name you may want to
type
Smith M Glaucoma. Some papers may contain the institution of the authors
as a key word.
For
example if Dr. Michael James Smith works in St. Elsewhere's Eye Unit, London.
To narrow the
search,
you may enter Smith M Glaucoma London or Smith M Glaucoma St. Elsewhere.
àÄ b.
Searching a subject.
This
is usually straight forward. For example, if you are searching for information
on
pseudoexfoliation
syndrome; you may type pseudoexfoliation syndrome in the box. The useful
aspect
of Pubmed is that each article is linked to other relevant papers. So for
instance you are
interested
in the paper on the laser treatment of pseudoexfoliation syndorme. There
is a link next to
these
paper which will take you to all other papers related to laser and pseudoexfoliation
syndrome.
The
problem arises when a condition has more than one medical terms or the
authors only enter
the
key words related to certain aspects of the study. A good example is dermatochalasis.
This
condition
may be under upper lid blepharoplasty, upper eyelid surgery, excess eyelid
skin in
addition
to dermatochalasis. To make sure you get all the relevant papers, it is
a good practice to
enter
all these terms in turn in the search box.
°¢ c.
Narrowing your search.
To
avoid being overwhelmed with information, you may narrow your search by
clicking the limits
section
under the search box:
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