Research article with a literature review on a healthcare topic

A literature review search is an iterative process. Your goal is to find all of the articles that are pertinent to your subject. Successful searching requires you to think about the complexity of language. You need to match the words you use in your search to the words used by article authors and database indexers. A thorough PubMed search must identify the author words likely to be in the title and abstract or the indexer's selected MeSH (Medical Subject Heading) Terms.

Start by doing a preliminary search using the words from the key parts of your research question.

Step #1: Initial Search

Enter the key concepts from your research question combined with the Boolean operator AND. PubMed does automatically combine your terms with AND. However, it can be easier to modify your search if you start by including the Boolean operators.

migraine AND acupuncture AND tryptamines

The search retrieves a number of relevant article records, but probably not everything on the topic.

Step #2: Evaluate Results

Use the Display Settings drop down in the upper left hand corner of the results page to change to Abstract display.

Review the results and move articles that are directly related to your topic to the Clipboard.

Go to the Clipboard to examine the language in the articles that are directly related to your topic.

• look for words in the titles and abstracts of these pertinent articles that differ from the words you used
• look for relevant MeSH terms in the list linked at the bottom of each article

The following two articles were selected from the search results and placed on the Clipboard.

Here are word differences to consider:

• Initial search used acupuncture. MeSH Terms use Acupuncture therapy.
• Initial search used migraine. Related word from MeSH Terms is Migraine without Aura and Migraine Disorders.
• Initial search used tryptamines. Article title uses sumatriptan. Related word from MeSH is Sumatriptan or Tryptamines.

With this knowledge you can reformulate your search to expand your retrieval, adding synonyms for all concepts except for manual and plaque.

#3 Revise Search

Use the Boolean OR operator to group synonyms together and use parentheses around the OR groups so they will be searched properly. See the image below to review the difference between Boolean OR / Boolean AND.

Here is what the new search looks like:

(migraine OR migraine disorders) AND (acupuncture OR acupuncture therapy) AND (tryptamines OR sumatriptan)