If you can't find any reviews...

My colleague Angela totally saved me today. I was doing this search on spinal/epidural anesthetics for C-sections, and all I could find was studies. Seriously, where were the reviews? It didn't seem possible that there were no reviews, and yet, I couldn't find any (in Medline).

My MeSH terms were: "Anesthesia, Spinal"[Mesh] OR "Anesthesia, Epidural"[Mesh]

Which seemed reasonable at the time, but there were no reviews.

Angela did the peer review on my search and was also surprised that there were no reviews. A few minutes later she came back with a Cochrane review exactly on topic. Whaaat?

So, it turns out that the Cochrane review was indexed with the broader term of the two MeSH that I used, which is "Anesthesia, Conduction"[Mesh]. I'd come across two other terms for this (regional and neuraxial) but not conduction, so I had assumed it was too broad.

I think this might be a bit like the rule of three situation that sometimes occurs. Anyway, I'm thinking that when there aren't many reviews for a topic which would seem to be a good one for reviews, a good strategy would be to check out some broader terms, since reviews tend to be broader in scope than studies.

I'll try it out a few times and report back whether it's a broadly applicable strategy or just applies in this instance.

Children

Apparently I don't have a blog posting for searching for info about children

This is useful when the limits ("Adolescent"[Mesh] OR "Child"[Mesh] OR "Infant"[Mesh])
 just aren't doing it for you. Which is kind of often, because of the whole "is 18 years an adolescent or an adult" thing, plus the whole reviews-don't-require-checktags thing.

If you're looking for everything you can find:

child[all fields] OR children[all fields] OR childhood[all fields] OR pediatr*[all fields] OR paediatr*[all fields] OR juvenile*[all fields] OR adolesc*[all fields] OR teen*[all fields] OR youth[all fields] OR boy[all fields] OR boys[all fields] OR girl[all fields] OR girls[all fields] OR infan*[all fields] OR newborn*[all fields] OR neonat*[all fields] OR toddler*[all fields] OR preschool*[all fields] OR pre-school*[all fields] OR school age*[all fields] OR elementary[all fields] OR high school*[all fields] OR secondary school*[all fields] OR grade school*[all fields] OR preteen*[all fields] OR pre-teen*[all fields] OR prepubescen*[all fields] OR pre-pubescen*[all fields] OR middle school*[all fields] OR schoolchild*[all fields]

If you're trying to narrow to just the pediatric-specific stuff:

child*[tiab] OR pediatr*[tiab] OR paediatr*[tiab] OR juvenile*[tiab] OR adolesc*[tiab] OR teen*[tiab] OR youth[tiab] OR boy[tiab] OR boys[tiab] OR girl*[tiab] OR infan*[tiab] OR newborn*[tiab] OR neonat*[tiab] OR toddler*[tiab] OR preschool*[tiab] OR pre-school*[tiab] OR school age*[tiab] OR elementary[tiab] OR high school*[tiab] OR secondary school*[tiab] OR grade school*[tiab] OR preteen*[tiab] OR pre-teen*[tiab] OR prepubescen*[tiab] OR pre-pubescen*[tiab] OR middle school*[tiab] OR schoolchild*[tiab]

For Ovid Medline:

(child* OR pediatr* OR paediatr* OR juvenile* OR adolesc* OR teen* OR youth OR boy OR boys OR girl* or infan* or newborn* or neonat* or toddler* or preschool*or pre-school* OR school age* OR elementary OR high school* OR secondary school* OR grade school* OR preteen* OR pre-teen* OR prepubescen* OR pre-pubescen* or middle school* or schoolchild*).ti,ab.

Mortality and Life Expectancy

Most important thing about mortality is to use the subheading. You will get lots more results with that. Really the other stuff gets superfluous, but we use it anyway just in case.

"Disease name/mortality"[Mesh] OR ("Disease Name"[Mesh] AND ("Mortality"[Mesh] OR "Life Expectancy"[Mesh] OR "Longevity"[Mesh] OR "Survival Rate"[Mesh] OR "Survival"[Mesh]))

if you can't do that:
mortality[subheading] OR "Mortality"[Mesh] OR "Life Expectancy"[Mesh] OR "Longevity"[Mesh] OR "Survival Rate"[Mesh] OR "Survival"[Mesh]

Don't use "Survival Analysis"[Mesh] because this is something else entirely.

EMBASE:

exp mortality/ or exp survival/ or exp longevity/ or exp lifespan/

Plus keywords:
(mortalit* or survival or longevit* or life span* or lifespan* or life expectan*).ti,ab.

And if you're really desperate:
(die or died or dying or death).ti,ab.

Leave off that first one if you're searching on deep infiltrating endometriosis, though. Because of the dumbest acronym ever.

Treatment beyond therapy

So, every once in a while I do a search using "therapy"[subheading], and get some results but not as many as I wanted. Then I have the "bright" idea of trying some other MeSH terms. I mean, maybe sometimes the indexers forget to put therapy as a subheading, or maybe the rule of three applied, or something like that. Right?

So, then I go through a labourious process of finding other relevant MeSH. Basically this involves thinking of treatments and searching them in the MeSH database and then looking at the broader terms.

Here's what I come up with:

"Treatment Outcome"[Mesh] OR "Therapeutic Uses"[Mesh] OR "Pharmaceutical Preparations"[Mesh] OR "Therapeutics"[Mesh] OR "Mental Health Services"[Mesh] OR "Psychiatric Somatic Therapies"[Mesh] OR "Psychotherapy"[Mesh]

So then I take that and combine it with the rest of my search, and use NOT to get rid of the "therapy"[subheading] articles which I've already looked at.

Guess what? So far, every single time, it's added nothing to the search. This time, I got a couple of articles about chemicals which are used as therapies but are also endogenous compounds, and in this case there are some articles about how their regulation affects the disease. Fits the search strategy, but completely irrelevant.

But who knows, in a few months I'll probably try it again. Einstein had a saying about this kind of behaviour...

College/University Students

Medline:

"Students"[Mesh]
Narrower terms are "Student Dropouts" and "Students, Health Occupations" - nothing about the level. You might wish to NoExp on the Students part if you're interested in college/university students in general rather than medical or nursing students.

There's also "Student Health Services"[Mesh]

Combine with:

"Universities"[Mesh] OR colleg*[tiab] OR universit*[tiab] OR postsecondary[tiab] OR post-secondary[tiab] OR undergraduate*[tiab] OR campus*[tiab] OR graduate[tiab] OR postgraduate*[tiab] OR post-graduate*[tiab] OR "higher education"[tiab] OR tertiary[tiab]


CINAHL:

MH "Student Health Services" OR MH "Students" OR MH "Students, Disabled" OR MH "Students, Foreign" OR MH "Students, Minority"
AND
MH "College and Universities+" OR TI (universit* OR postsecondary OR post-secondary OR undergraduate* OR campus* OR graduate OR postgraduate* OR post-graduate* OR "higher education" OR tertiary) OR AB (universit* OR postsecondary OR post-secondary OR undergraduate* OR campus* OR graduate OR postgraduate* OR post-graduate* OR "higher education" OR tertiary)
OR

MH "Students, College" OR MH "Students, Graduate+" OR MH "Students, Undergraduate"

You may or may not wish to include:

MH "Students, Health Occupations+" OR MH "Students, Pre-Nursing"

Breast Cancer Hormone Receptors

I recommend searching this in Ovid Medline to make use of adjacency searching.

Estrogen receptor positive:

(estrogen receptor positive or oestrogen receptor positive or er positive or er+ or estrogen receptor +ve or oestrogen receptor +ve or er +ve).mp.
(estrogen receptor adj2 positive).mp.
(oestrogen receptor adj2 positive).mp.

If you don't have access to Ovid Medline, substitute this for the adjacency searches:

"estrogen receptor positive"[tiab] OR "oestrogen receptor positive"[tiab] OR "estrogen receptor alpha positive"[tiab] OR "oestrogen receptor alpha positive"[tiab]

Estrogen receptor negative:

(estrogen receptor negative or oestrogen receptor negative or er negative or er- or estrogen receptor -ve or oestrogen receptor -ve or er -ve).mp.
(estrogen receptor adj2 negative).mp.
(oestrogen receptor adj2 negative).mp.

For PubMed:
"estrogen receptor negative"[tiab] OR "oestrogen receptor negative"[tiab] OR "estrogen receptor alpha negative"[tiab] OR "oestrogen receptor alpha negative"[tiab]

Progesterone receptor positive:

(progesterone receptor positive or pr positive or pgr positive or pr+ or pgr+ or progesterone receptor +ve or pr +ve or pgr +ve).mp.
(progesterone receptor adj2 positive).mp.

Progesterone receptor negative:

(progesterone receptor negative or pr negative or pgr negative or pr- or pgr- or progesterone receptor -ve or pr -ve or pgr -ve).mp.
(progesterone receptor adj2 negative).mp.

Human epidermal growth factor positive:

(human epidermal growth factor adj3 positive).mp.
or
(her2 positive or her2-neu positive or erbb2 positive or her2+ or "her2/neu+" or erbb2+ or her2 +ve or her2-neu +ve or erbb2 +ve).mp.

Human epidermal growth factor negative:

(human epidermal growth factor adj3 negative).mp.
or
(her2 negative or her2-neu negative or erbb2 negative or her2- or "her2/neu-" or erbb2- or her2 –ve or her2-neu –ve or erbb2 -ve).mp.

Additional, more general keywords:

(hormone receptor positive or hr positive or hormone receptor double positive or estrogen receptor progesterone receptor positive or er+pr+ or er+pgr+ or hormone receptor +ve or hr +ve or luminal a or luminal b or normal like).mp.
(hormone receptor adj2 positive).mp.

May be relevant depending on the specific question:

(triple negative or basal like).mp.

(her2 enriched).mp.

Definitions:

Luminal A: ER+PR+HER2-, low levels of Ki-67
Luminal B: ER+PR+, HER2 either + or -, high levels of Ki-67
Triple negative: ER-PR-HER2-
HER2 enriched: ER-PR-HER2+
Normal-like: ER+PR+HER2, low levels of Ki-67

No subheadings for MeSH terms recently promoted from Supplementary Concept

If you come across a MeSH term which was recently promoted from being a supplementary concept to a proper MeSH, you may have to modify your search.

For instance, the drug Adalimumab shows Year Introduced: 2016 (2002). This means that it became a MeSH term in 2016, but was available as a supplementary concept since 2002.

I was feeling pretty good about this because 2002 was some time ago. My first search went:

("Adalimumab/adverse effects"[Mesh] OR "Adalimumab/toxicity"[Mesh]) AND ("Lung/drug effects"[Mesh] OR "Lung Diseases/epidemiology"[Mesh] OR "Lung Diseases/etiology"[Mesh])
There were 11 results (9 in English).

Pretty textbook, right? Yawn. What I didn't notice was that all of the results were from 2015+, which should have been a big hint.

Anyway, then I did the EMBASE search, and holey crowley. Tons and tons of highly relevant results, that should have been found by Medline.

Which is when I realised that all those articles indexed between 2002 and 2015 would have been indexed "adalimumab"[Supplementary concept] _with no subheadings_. Because supplementary concepts don't get subheadings! So when the term was promoted, they were changed to "Adalimumab"[Mesh], also without subheadings.

"Adalimumab"[Mesh] AND ("Lung/drug effects"[Mesh] OR "Lung Diseases/epidemiology"[Mesh] OR "Lung Diseases/etiology"[Mesh])
There were 107 results (99 in English).

So, watch out for those promoted terms. They're tricksy!

Pregnancy Outcomes

The MeSH tree is usually pretty good, but this is an instance where it fails. There is a MeSH term for Pregnancy Outcomes (added 1988), but it only lists two narrower terms: Live Birth and Stillbirth. That's all very well, but there are a lot of other outcomes to be considered.

"Pregnancy Outcome"[Mesh] OR "Abortion, Spontaneous"[Mesh] OR "Abortion, Induced"[Mesh] OR "Fetal Death"[Mesh] OR "Maternal Death"[Mesh] OR "Obstetric Labor Complications"[Mesh] OR "Perinatal Death"[Mesh] OR "Cesarean Section"[Mesh] OR "Infant, Low Birth Weight"[Mesh] OR "Term Birth"[Mesh] OR "Maternal Mortality"[Mesh] OR "Fetal Mortality"[Mesh] OR "Infant Mortality"[Mesh] OR "Birth Weight"[Mesh] OR "Birth Injuries"[Mesh]

"Obstetric Labor Complications" includes "Obstetric Labor, Premature" and its narrower term, Premature Birth. There is also "Infant, Premature" if this topic is of particular interest.

CINAHL:
MH "Pregnancy Outcomes" OR MH "Abortion, Spontaneous+" OR MH "Abortion, Induced+" OR MH "Term Birth" OR MH "Perinatal Death" OR MH "Infant, Large for Gestational Age" OR MH "Infant, Low Birth Weight+" OR MH "Infant, Postmature" OR MH "Infant, Premature" OR MH "Childbirth, Premature" OR MH "Labor, Premature" OR MH "Labor Complications+" OR MH "Maternal Mortality" OR MH "Cesarean Section+" OR MH "Birth Weight" OR MH "Birth Injuries+"

EMBASE:
pregnancy outcome/ or exp live birth/ or exp abortion/ or exp fetus death/ or exp maternal death/ or exp labor complication/ or exp perinatal death/ or exp cesarean section/ or exp birth weight/ or exp term birth/ or embryo mortality/ or fetus mortality/ or maternal mortality/ or exp perinatal mortality/ or prenatal mortality/ or exp birth injury/

Paternalism and the new PubMed syntax

It really annoys me when the computer thinks it knows better than I do what I want. Especially when it is wrong.

Call me a dinosaur, but I don't like the new PubMed syntax. I liked it better when you had to know what you were doing to get the syntax right, and in return, PubMed gave you back what you expected.
Now, you can type in, without quotes:
dialysis[mh]

Which sounds great, until you look at the Search Details, and see that it has actually searched "renal dialysis"[MeSH Terms] OR "dialysis"[MeSH Terms]

Excuse me! That is not what I asked for! If I wanted Renal Dialysis, I would have typed Renal Dialysis. What's the point of looking up the correct term in the MeSH database if they're just going to put in the wrong term anyway?

Now, I know what's happened here. PubMed assumes that, because when most people say dialysis they mean what MeSH calls Renal Dialysis, they're going to do us a favour and add in the thing that they think we really mean. And maybe it will help someone out there. But it's really annoying to those of us who read the scope notes and rejected Renal Dialysis because we really meant Dialysis.

I'm pretty sure that's what's going on because I tried it on a bunch of other examples, and it mostly didn't happen except for one other example where there was another lay term (depression) which usually refers to a different MeSH term (Depressive Disorder) but can also refer to another MeSH term (Depression).

I.e. if you type in depression[mh] it will run instead: "depressive disorder"[MeSH Terms] OR "depression"[MeSH Terms]

So, if you want your MeSH term and only your MeSH term, it's best to go back to the old way and always type in your quotation marks.

"Dialysis"[mh] will give you "Dialysis"[mh]
"Depression"[mh] will give you "Depression"[mh]

Whew! Back to normal. Which just goes to show that it's always better to do things the right way. Because if you pander to the people who want convenience, you're probably going to end up with a lot of unwanted paternalism as well.

Mild Traumatic Brain Injuries

These are really annoying because no one can quite agree on whether they are the same as concussion or not. Some people say that MTBIs are a type of concussion. Other people say that concussions are a type of MTBIs. Still others use then synonymously, while another group contend that they are entirely separate.

Secondly, the MeSH term "Brain Injuries, Traumatic" was added to the MeSH tree in 2017.

So what's a librarian to do?

For the next few years, this will probably do just fine:

"Brain Concussion"[Mesh]
OR
"Brain Injuries"[Mesh] AND (mild[tiab] OR mtbi[tiab])

If it's after 2022 and you just want results from the past 5 years, you could try this:

"Brain Concussion"[Mesh]
OR
"Brain Injuries, Traumatic"[Mesh] AND (mild[tiab] OR mtbi[tiab])

Yikes, I just realised that 5 years from now is in the 2020s! Scary thought...

If you want to get really fancy, you could do something like this:

"Brain Concussion"[Mesh]
OR
"Brain Injuries, Traumatic"[Mesh] AND (mild[tiab] OR mtbi[tiab]) AND "2017/01/01"[PDat] : "3000/12/31"[PDat]
OR
"Brain Injuries"[Mesh] AND (mild[tiab] OR mtbi[tiab]) AND "1940/01/01"[PDat] : "2016/12/31"[PDat]

You can change the 1940 part to whatever year suits your search.

Naturally, there may be some subheadings of interest (diagnosis and/or therapy, for example), to add to those MeSH.

Once you've got that set, with any appropriate subheadings, then add any additional MeSH terms and/or limits of interest.

What I like to do is, go through the results treating the terms as synonymous. That way you won't miss anything of relevance. However, when it's time to select some articles of particular relevance to attach to the email (or print and add to the enveloppe), I like to select articles using the same terminology which the doctor used.

Lastly, in the text of the email or the accompanying letter, I just explain to the doctor that there is some controversy about the terminology, and how I've dealt with it.

EMBASE:

exp traumatic brain injury/ and (mild or mtbi).mp.
OR
exp brain concussion/

Vitamins

Vitamins can be called by a number of different names. Here are some for your MeSH, keyword-searching and Word-highlighting use:

Vitamin A:

Mesh: "Vitamin A"[Mesh] OR "Vitamin A Deficiency"[Mesh]

keywords: "vitamin a"[tiab] OR retinol*[tiab] OR tretinoin[tiab]

There also seems to be a connection to carotene: caroten*[tiab]


Vitamin B:
There are actually a whole bunch of Vitamin Bs, and apparently some of them are other vitamins as well (Vit G, H, and M). Because, you know, that's not confusing at all!

I recommend use of Ovid for this one so that you can use truncation.
Mesh: exp Vitamin B Complex/ or exp Vitamin B Deficiency/
keywords: (vitamin b* or cobalamin* or cyanocobalamin* or hydroxycobalamin* or riboflavin* or vitamin g or biotin or vitamin h or niacin or thiamin* or adenine or pantothenic acid or pantothenate or folic acid or folate or vitamin m).mp.

However, PubMed does have a Pharmacological Action for Vitamin B Complex, which might be useful as well.
Mesh: "Vitamin B Complex"[Mesh] OR "Vitamin B Complex"[Pharmacological Action] OR "Vitamin B Deficiency"[Mesh]

Vitamin C:

Mesh: "Ascorbic Acid"[Mesh] OR "Ascorbic Acid Deficiency"[Mesh]

Watch out for this one in Ovid. The mapping is broken and it maps to Vitamin D instead of Ascorbic acid. This has been reported to Ovid, but so far they have not been able to fix it. In PubMed it maps just fine.

keywords: "vitamin c"[tiab] OR "ascorbic acid"[tiab] OR ascorbate[tiab] OR ascorbium[tiab]

Vitamin D:

Mesh: "Vitamin D"[Mesh] OR "Vitamin D Deficiency"[Mesh]

"vitamin d"[tiab] OR cholecalciferol*[tiab] OR ergocalciferol*[tiab] OR dihydrotachysterol*[tiab] OR hydroxycholecalciferol*[tiab] OR "25 hydroxyvitamin d2"[tiab] OR "25 hydroxyvitamin d 2"[tiab]

Vitamin E:

Mesh: "Vitamin E"[Mesh] OR "Vitamin E Deficiency"[Mesh]

keywords: "vitamin e"[tiab] OR tocopherol*[tiab] OR tocotrienol*[tiab]

Vitamin F:

Mesh: "Arachidonic Acid"[Mesh]

keywords: "vitamin f"[tiab] OR "arachidonic acid"[tiab] OR arachidonate*[tiab] OR "eicosatetraenoic acid"[tiab] OR eicosatetranoate*[tiab]

Vitamin K:

Mesh: exp Vitamin K/ or exp Vitamin K Deficiency/

Once again, Ovid for the truncation:

keywords: (vitamin k* or phytomenadione* or menaquinone* or menadione* or phytonadione* or phylloquinone*).mp.

If you really need to use PubMed:
Mesh: "Vitamin K"[Mesh] OR "Vitamin K Deficiency"[Mesh]

keywords: "vitamin k"[tiab] OR "vitamin k 1"[tiab] OR "vitamin k1"[tiab] OR "vitamin k 2"[tiab] OR"vitamin k2"[tiab] OR"vitamin k 3"[tiab] OR"vitamin k3"[tiab] OR phytomenadione*[tiab] OR menaquinone*[tiab] OR menadione*[tiab] OR phytonadione*[tiab]

Vitamin U:

This one would be better in Ovid as well, for adjacency:

keywords: (vitamin u or methymethionine).mp. or (methylsulfonium adj3 methionine).mp. or (methylsulphonium adj3 methionine).mp.
Mesh: exp Vitamin U/

But if not, PubMed can do this for you:

Mesh: "Vitamin U"[Mesh]
keywords: "vitamin u"[tiab] OR "methymethionine"[tiab] OR ("methylsulfonium[tiab] AND "methionine"[tiab]) OR ("methylsulphonium[tiab] AND "methionine"[tiab])

In the ambulatory / outpatient setting

exp Ambulatory Care/ or exp Ambulatory Care Facilities/ or exp Ambulatory Surgical Procedures/ OR exp Outpatients/

(office based or clinic based or ambulatory or outpatient* or out patient* or surgicent* or day clinic or day clinics).mp.

(surg* adj2 cent*).mp.

An additional strategy is to use the authors' address/affiliation/institution field to identify the setting. This is not as accurate and should be done with articles remaining after the above searches. After all, a researcher may work for a university but do their research at a hospital, for instance.

However, you can search: (hospital or medical centre or medical center).in. and then use NOT to remove those from the list. Go through the remaining articles and look at the addresses to see if any are in a recognisably ambulatory setting. Good luck!

Truncate all drug brand name searches

If you search a drug brand name, be sure to truncate the end. Sometimes the brand name will appear with the TM symbol at the end, and if you search without truncation, you will miss those.

e.g. suboxone*[tiab] will find slightly more results than suboxone[tiab]

Watch out for advil*, though - there is a thing called advillin.

Substance Related Disorders

This is pretty easy in Medline:

"Substance-Related Disorders"[Mesh]

Just remember the hyphen and you're all good.

In PsycInfo, a little trickier, just because it doesn't explode properly:
Drug addictions:
DE "Substance Use Disorder" OR DE "Drug Abuse" OR DE "Alcohol Abuse" OR DE "Alcoholism" OR DE "Binge Drinking" OR DE "Drug Dependency" OR DE "Drug Addiction" OR DE "Inhalant Abuse" OR DE "Glue Sniffing" OR DE "Polydrug Abuse" OR DE "Alcoholism" OR DE "Alcoholic Psychosis" OR DE "Alcoholic Hallucinosis" OR DE "Delirium Tremens" OR DE "Korsakoffs Psychosis" OR DE "Wernicke's Syndrome" OR DE "Heroin Addiction"
Other addictions:
DE "Internet Addiction" OR DE "Process Addiction" OR DE "Pathological Gambling" OR DE "Sexual Addiction" OR DE "Workaholism"OR DE "Addiction"


In EMBASE, really tricky!
exp addiction/ or exp alcohol abuse/ or exp drug abuse/ or exp substance abuse/

You might think that you've caught all of the relevant stuff when you find the EMTREE term "addiction", but there are more terms under "abuse". But doing exp abuse/ is no good because of all the other, non-substance related narrower terms.

Comorbidity

As with many of the non-disease, non-treatment MeSH, Comorbidity is used inconsistently by indexers. Here are some keywords to help you:

"Comorbidity"[Mesh] OR comorbid*[tiab] OR co-morbid*[tiab] OR co-occur*[tiab] OR simultaneous*[tiab] OR superimpos*[tiab] OR coexist*[tiab] OR co-exist*[tiab]

If there is a sequence, that is if the patient first had one disease and then acquired another, you can also use:
preexist*[tiab] OR pre-exist*[tiab] OR antecedent[tiab]

Of course, your best bet is to combine the first disorder with the second disorder, without using any of the above. This is for cases where you're looking broadly (e.g. all of the diseases which can be comorbid with a particular disorder), or when there is another combination of the two terms that is cluttering up the search, for instance if you're searching for people who are addicted to two substances, and come across a lot of articles about treatment of patients who each have one of a variety of substance use disorders.

For the specific instance of a mental disorder and a substance abuse disorder, there is:
"Diagnosis, Dual (Psychiatry)"[Mesh] OR "dual diagnosis"[tiab] OR "dual diagnoses"[tiab]

CINAHL default search doesn't search the abstract?!?

OK, so if you're searching in CINAHL, and using a combination of Headings and keywords, the default setting to just search a keyword is "Select a field". I recall someone telling me that this was not an optimal search, but didn't realise how bad it was until today.

So, I had this:
S7     abscess*     7,986
S6     (MH "Abscess+")     5,152

Combined it with the rest of my search, got 28 results.

Then, I looked at my other search terms without the Abscess terms, which meant that there were 93 articles. However, one of those articles had the term abscess in the abstract. In fact, it appeared several times in the abstract and was obviously a significant part of the study results!

So, I searched again, and this time I received fewer results!

S10     TI abscess* OR AB abscess*     6,000

But when I combined them with my other search, there were more results, including the one which I had found.

The really weird thing is that when I tried S10 NOT S7, there were zero results! How is that possible?

Weird, weird, weird.

Prognosis

So, this is a tricky one. It's usually medicolegal, and usually it doesn't specify how the patient was treated, if at all.

"Prognosis"[Mesh:NoExp] OR "Disease Progression"[Mesh] OR "Return to Work"[Mesh] OR "Recovery of Function"[Mesh] OR "Convalescence"[Mesh] OR "Mortality"[Mesh] OR "Disease Free Survival"[Mesh]

There's also rehabilitation as a subheading. Probably best to tie it to the disease/disorder in question, if possible, and only free-float it if there isn't a disease in the question.

That's starting to get into the "how long will it take to get better" stuff, but here are a few more for that aspect:
"Time Factors"[Mesh] OR "Length of Stay"[Mesh]

Depending on the search, you may also wish to try:
"Treatment Outcome"[Mesh]

You can also do something straightforward, like:
prognosis[title] OR prognostic[title] OR predict*[title]
Why not?

EMBASE:

exp prognosis/ or disease course/ or exp adverse outcome/ or exp convalescence/ or exp disease clearance/ or exp disease duration/ or exp disease exacerbation/ or exp general condition deterioration/ or exp general condition improvement/ or exp illness trajectory/ or exp relapse/ or exp remission/ or exp survival/ or exp return to work/ or exp work resumption/ or exp mortality/

Suboxone gets its own MeSH heading!

And huzzah say I!

But, to get all that you can,

"Buprenorphine, Naloxone Drug Combination"[Mesh] OR ("Buprenorphine"[Mesh] AND "Naloxone"[Mesh]) OR suboxone*[tiab] OR bunavail*[tiab] OR zubsolv*[tiab] OR "buprenorphine naloxone"[tiab] OR "bup nal"[tiab] OR "bup nlx"[tiab] OR "bup nx"[tiab] OR "bnx"[tiab]

Note the asterisk after the suboxone keyword. This is important because some articles put the TradeMark symbol at the end of Suboxone, and this way you'll catch those as well.

What's really annoying is all the variant abbreviations that they use for this. I mean, seriously, check out this list:

• BUP-NAL
• BUP-NLX
• BUP-NX
• BPN-NAL
• BPN-NLX
• BPN-NX
• BNX

And that's not even mentioning the whitespace character variants, which fortunately the databases will ignore for you. However, if you are highlighting in Word, you'll want to replace the - with a / and then a +. As in, BUP/NAL and BUP+NAL.

In fact, I'm wondering if, when highlighting in Word, it might be faster to do: BUP-, BUP/, BUP+, -NAL, /NAL, +NAL, BPN-, etc... - That's 5 abbreviations times 3 whitespace characters for a total of 15 Find/replaces. Whereas the other way it's 6 combinations times 3 whitespace characters for a total of 18 Find/replaces. Plus, if some daft nutter has come up with another variant, you stand a chance of finding it by one or the other half of the combo.

EMBASE:

exp buprenorphine plus naloxone/ became an EMTREE heading in 2006.