Cancer recurrence

Medline:
"Recurrence"[Mesh] OR "Neoplasm Recurrence, Local"[Mesh] OR "Follow-Up Studies"[Mesh]

recurr*[tiab] OR relaps*[tiab] OR "follow up"[tiab] OR surveill*[tiab] OR monitoring[tiab] OR monitored[tiab]

In EMBASE, this is really tricky!

If you type in: recurrence, it will give you the EMTREE heading "recurrent disease"

But there are a whole bunch more!

exp recurrent disease/ or exp tumor recurrence/ or exp cancer recurrence/ or exp biochemical recurrence/ or exp relapse/ or exp follow up/

Ductal Breast Cancer

Watch out for this one! I was asked to do a search on "Breast Cancer of the ductal type", and when I typed those words into the Ovid Medline interface, they mapped to Breast Neoplasms and Carcinoma, Ductal, Breast.

I figured that the second one was what I wanted. However, perhaps there was a type of ductal breast cancer that wasn't a carcinoma? I thought a test might be useful.

(exp Breast Neoplasms/ and ductal.ti.) not exp Carcinoma, Ductal, Breast/

1696 results !!!!!

I looked through the first few results, and they were all relevant and recent. No reasonable explanation whatsoever.

After a little further analysis from PubMed Reminer (a website of surpassing usefulness and awesomeness), I ended up with the following search:

exp Carcinoma, Ductal, Breast/ or (exp Breast Neoplasms/ and (exp Carcinoma, Intraductal, Noninfiltrating/ or exp Carcinoma, Ductal))

PsycInfo: health professionals

PsycInfo only explodes down one level, so here is the full manual explosion of health professionals:

DE "Health Personnel" OR DE "Allied Health Personnel" OR DE "Occupational Therapists" OR DE "Physical Therapists" OR DE "Psychiatric Aides" OR DE "Speech Therapists" OR DE "Medical Personnel" OR DE "Dentists" OR DE "Military Medical Personnel" OR DE "Nurses" OR DE "Optometrists" OR DE "Pharmacists" OR DE "Physical Therapists" OR DE "Physicians" OR DE "Psychiatric Hospital Staff" OR DE "Mental Health Personnel" OR DE "Clinical Psychologists" OR DE "Psychiatric Hospital Staff" OR DE "Psychiatric Nurses" OR DE "Psychiatric Social Workers" OR DE "Psychiatrists" OR DE "Psychotherapists" OR DE "School Psychologists" OR DE "Psychiatric Nurses" OR DE "Family Physicians" OR DE "General Practitioners" OR DE "Gynecologists" OR DE "Internists" OR DE "Neurologists" OR DE "Obstetricians" OR DE "Pathologists" OR DE "Pediatricians" OR DE "Psychiatrists" OR DE "Surgeons" OR DE "Psychiatric Aides" OR DE "Hypnotherapists" OR DE "Psychoanalysts"

If useful, there are also:


DE "Health Personnel Attitudes" OR DE "Therapist Attitudes" OR DE "Therapist Attitudes" OR DE "Psychotherapist Attitudes"

Group Therapy

This one is a real pain because there are so many other Mesh using the word group, but in completely different ways.

"Psychotherapy, Group"[Mesh] OR "Peer Group"[Mesh] OR "Group Processes"[Mesh] OR "Group Structure"[Mesh] OR "Self-Help Groups"[Mesh] OR "Focus Groups"[Mesh] OR ("Social Support"[Mesh] AND group*[tiab])

PsycInfo:

DE "Group Psychotherapy" OR DE "Encounter Group Therapy" OR DE "Marathon Group Therapy" OR DE "Therapeutic Community" OR DE "Group Dynamics" OR DE "Group Cohesion" OR DE "Group Development" OR DE "Group Discussion" OR DE "Group Participation" OR DE "Group Performance" OR DE "Intergroup Dynamics" OR DE "Social Group Work" OR DE "Support Groups" OR DE "Twelve Step Programs" OR DE "Alcoholics Anonymous" OR (DE "Social Support" AND (TI group* OR AB group*))

Spondylolisthesis

"Spondylolisthesis"[Mesh] is pretty straightforward, however, if you need to do any keywording:

spondylolisthes*[tiab] or spondylisthes*[tiab] or spondyloptos*[tiab] or anterolisthes*[tiab] or retrolisthes*[tiab]

Ovid:
exp Spondylolisthesis/

(spondylolisthes* or spondylisthes* or spondyloptos* or anterolisthes* or retrolisthes*).ti,ab.

And this is one of those rare occurrences where the Medline and EMBASE terms are exactly the same!

Hormone Blockade (for cancer treatment)

This terminology is particularly tricky, because some of the treatments that they use to block hormones are - those hormones! But some are not!

Feeling croggled? I don't blame you! Here's some MeSH to help you out...

"Hormone Antagonists"[Mesh] OR "Hormone Antagonists"[Pharmacological Action] OR "Antineoplastic Agents, Hormoneal"[Mesh] OR "Antineoplastic Agents, Hormoneal"[Pharmacological Action]

And some keywords:
estrogen receptor block*[tiab] OR selective estrogen receptor modulat*[tiab] OR serm*[tiab] OR tamoxifen[tiab] OR fulvestrant[tiab] OR aromatase inhibit*[tiab] OR letrozole[tiab] OR anastrozole[tiab] OR exemestane[tiab] OR luteinizing hormone releasing hormone agonist*[tiab] OR goserelin[tiab] OR leuprolide[tiab] OR buserelin[tiab] OR toremifene[tiab]

These keywords were brought to you by the Canadian Cancer Society website and the American Cancer Society website. Thanks for 'splaining...


EMBASE has:

exp hormone antagonist/ or exp "antineoplastic hormone agonists and antagonists"/

Neoadjuvant therapy

This is treatment that they do before the actual treatment for cancer.

Medline has the term "Neoadjuvant Therapy", but it's relatively new, and also with a topic like this you may wish to search the in process articles:

neoadjuvan*[tiab] OR neo-adjuvan*[tiab] OR pretreat*[tiab] OR pre-treat*[tiab]


EMBASE also has exp neoadjuvant therapy/

Soft Tissue Injuries

Because apparently none of the databases explodes these properly.

(To be fair, the Medline ones with /injuries could not be narrower terms of "Soft Tissue Injuries", but still, the ligament and tendon ones could have been added!

"Soft Tissue Injuries"[Mesh] OR "Anterior Cruciate Ligament Injuries"[Mesh] OR "Tendon Injuries"[Mesh] OR "Muscles/injuries"[Mesh] OR "Ligaments/injuries"[Mesh] OR "Tendons/injuries"[Mesh] OR "Subcutaneous Fat/injuries"[Mesh] OR "Skin/injuries"[Mesh] OR soft tissue injur*[tiab]

EMBASE:

exp soft tissue injury/ or exp muscle injury/ or exp "ligament and tendon injury"/ or exp skin injury/ or soft tissue injur*.mp.

SportDiscus:

DE "SOFT tissue injuries" OR DE "MUSCLE injuries" OR DE "ABDOMINAL muscle injuries" OR DE "CALF muscle injuries" OR DE "HAMSTRING muscle injuries" OR DE "QUADRICEPS muscle injuries" OR DE "SKELETAL muscle injuries" OR DE "TENDON injuries" OR DE "ACHILLES tendon injuries" OR DE "LIGAMENT injuries" OR DE "COLLATERAL ligament injuries" OR DE "CRUCIATE ligament injuries" OR DE "PATELLAR ligament injuries" OR DE "SKIN injuries" OR DE "SKIN ulcers" OR DE "SUNBURN"

Watch out: sometimes when a doctor says "soft tissue injuries", they actually mean whiplash, which is a whole different thing. If you get a chance for a reference interview, it's a good question to ask. Suspect this especially if the question is related to a traffic accident.

Outpatients vs Inpatients

Medline:

Outpatients:

"Outpatients"[Mesh] OR "Outpatient Clinics, Hospital"[Mesh] OR "Ambulatory Care"[Mesh] OR "Ambulatory Care Facilities"[Mesh] OR "Community Health Services"[Mesh] OR "Community Health Centers"[Mesh] OR "Community Health Planning"[Mesh] OR "Community Medicine"[Mesh] OR "Primary Health Care"[Mesh:NoExp] OR "General Practice"[Mesh] OR "House Calls"[Mesh] OR "Day Care, Medical"[Mesh]

Now, some of these terms are narrower terms of Ambulatory Care Facilities. So you may be thinking, why not clean this up a bit? However, sometimes if you go too broad, you lose some of the narrowest terms (see my post about this) so I kept them in just to be sure to get everything.

Keywords: outpatient*[tiab] OR out-patient*[tiab] OR ambulatory[tiab] OR communit*[tiab] OR family practi*[tiab] OR "general practice"[tiab] OR general practitioner*[tiab] OR "primary care"[tiab] OR "primary health care"[tiab] OR "primary healthcare"[tiab] OR "family medicine"[tiab] OR "family health"[tiab] OR "office based"[tiab] OR officebased[tiab]

Additional MesH which may or may not be relevant to your question:
"Ambulatory Surgical Procedures"[Mesh] OR "Community Psychiatry"[Mesh] OR "Community Dentistry"[Mesh] OR "Community Health Workers"[Mesh] OR "Nurses, Community Health"[Mesh] OR "Primary Care Nursing"[Mesh] OR "Physicians, Primary Care"[Mesh] OR "Physicians, Family"[Mesh] OR "General Practitioners"[Mesh]

Nursing Homes and Group Homes are usually considered Outpatient rather than Inpatient, but make the best decision for your question:
"Residential Facilities"[Mesh]

These are sometimes inpatient and sometimes outpatient:
"Residential Treatment"[Mesh] OR "Long-Term Care"[Mesh]

Inpatients:

"Inpatients"[Mesh] OR "Hospitalization"[Mesh] OR "Hospital Units"[Mesh] OR Hospitals[Mesh] OR "Hospital Departments"[Mesh:NoExp] OR "Institutionalization"[Mesh] OR "Child, Hospitalized"[Mesh] OR "Child, Institutionalized"[Mesh] OR "Adolescent, Hospitalized"[Mesh] OR "Adolescent, Institutionalized"[Mesh]

Keywords: inpatient*[tiab] OR in-patient*[tiab] OR hospitaliz*[tiab] OR hospitalis*[tiab] OR residential*[tiab] OR institutionaliz*[tiab] OR institutionalis*[tiab] OR admitted[tiab] OR admission[tiab] OR readmission[tiab]

Additional MeSH which may or may not be relevant to your question:
"Health Facility Environment"[Mesh] OR "Anesthesia Department, Hospital"[Mesh] OR "Cardiology Service, Hospital"[Mesh] OR "Emergency Service, Hospital"[Mesh] OR "Nuclear Medicine Department, Hospital"[Mesh] OR "Obstetrics and Gynecology Department, Hospital"[Mesh] OR "Oncology Service, Hospital"[Mesh] OR "Psychiatric Department, Hospital"[Mesh] OR "Radiology Department, Hospital"[Mesh] OR "Surgery Department, Hospital"[Mesh] OR "Urology Department, Hospital"[Mesh]

This list does not include all of the departments listed under the MeSH term Hospital Departments – it focusses on the clinical ones. You may wish to check the list to make sure that nothing relevant has been missed.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/?term=hospital+departments

CINAHL:

Outpatients:

MH "Outpatients" OR MH "Outpatient Service" OR MH "Ambulatory Care Facilities+" OR MH "Ambulatory Care" OR MH "Community Health Services+" OR MH "Community Health Centers+" OR MH "Community Medicine" OR MH "Community Living" OR MH "Rehabilitation, Community-Based" OR MH "Primary Health Care" OR MH "Family Practice" OR MH "Home Health Care+" OR MH "Day Care" OR MH "Respite Care"


MH "Ambulatory Surgery" OR MH "Ambulatory Care Nursing" OR MH "Community Health Nursing+" OR MH "Community Health Workers"  OR MH "Physicians, Family" OR MH "Home Nursing"

MH "Residential Facilities+" OR MH "Residential Care" OR MH "Long-Term Care"

Inpatients:

MH "Inpatients" OR MH "Institutionalization+" OR MH "Hospital Units+" OR MH "Hospitals+" OR MH "Health Facility Departments"

MH "Health Facility Environment" OR MH "Anesthesiology Service" OR MH "Emergency Service+" OR MH "Obstetric Service" OR MH "Psychiatric Service" OR  MH "Radiology Service"

Again, I selected the most clinical-sounding Health Facility Departments.

EMBASE:

Outpatients:

exp community care/ OR exp community medicine/ OR exp community living/

exp outpatient/ or exp outpatient department/ or exp community care/ or exp community mental health center/ or exp community medicine/ or exp primary health care/ or exp general practice/ or exp home care/ or exp day care/

exp ambulatory surgery/ or exp social psychiatry/ or exp health auxiliary/ or exp general practitioner/

exp residential home/ or exp residential care/ or long term care/ or exp institutional care/

Inpatients:

exp hospital patient/ or exp hospitalization/ or exp hospital admission/ or exp hospital readmission/ or exp child hospitalization/ or "hospital subdivisions and components"/ or exp hospital/

exp delivery room/ or exp heart center/ or exp hospital department/ or exp operating room/ or exp radiology department/ or exp recovery room/ or exp ward/

Articles by occupational group including unspecified

Sometimes you get a question about a particular healthcare occupation.

Sometimes you can take the associated MeSH term and just add it to your search: AND "Physicians"[Mesh]

However, sometimes, especially for ethical questions, there are lots of good articles which don't specify the occupational group, and you want to include those. Here's where the famous double NOT comes in handy.

Example: Physicians and unspecified:
NOT ("Health Personnel"[Mesh] NOT ("Faculty, Medical"[Mesh] OR "Medical Staff"[Mesh] OR "Physicians"[Mesh]))

For the search I'm doing today, the double NOT search returned 775 articles, whereas "Physicians[Mesh] returned 88 results.

Return to Work

MeSH: "Return to Work" added 2013.

For older articles, Use (return* adj3 work*).ti,ab,kw. and (resum* adj3 work*).ti,ab,kw. in Ovid, as well as (work resumption or job re-entry or job reentry or reemployment or re-employment).ti,ab,kw.

(return* adj3 active duty).ti,ab,kw may also be useful if soldiers are involved.

EMBASE: exp return to work/ or exp work resumption/
(see above for keywords)

CINAHL has MH "Job Re-entry"

PsycInfo has DE "Reemployment"

plus of course: TI return* N3 work* OR AB return* N3 work*

In the Operating Room

Yes, it's that time again! Time for a Settings question!

"Operating Rooms"[Mesh] OR "Surgery Department, Hospital"[Mesh] OR "Intraoperative Complications"[Mesh] OR "Surgical Procedures, Operative"[Mesh]

keywords: "operating room"[tiab] OR "operating rooms"[tiab] OR "operating theatre"[tiab] OR "operating theatres"[tiab] OR "operating theater"[tiab] OR "operating theaters"[tiab] OR "surgical theatre"[tiab] OR "surgical theatres"[tiab] OR "surgical theater"[tiab] OR "surgical theaters"[tiab] OR "surgical room"[tiab] OR "surgical rooms"[tiab] OR "surgical department"[tiab] OR "surgical departments"[tiab] OR "surgical ward"[tiab] OR "surgical wards"[tiab] OR "surgery ward"[tiab] OR "surgery wards"[tiab]


CINAHL:
MH "Operating Rooms" OR MH "Operating Room Personnel+" OR MH "Surgery, Operative+" OR MH "Intraoperative Complications+"

MH "Operating Room Information Systems" - maybe? Depends on your question.

Keywords: operating room* OR operating theat* OR surgical theat* OR surgical room* OR surg* department* or surg* ward*


EMBASE:
exp operating room/ or exp surgical ward/ or exp surgery/ or exp peroperative complication/ or exp operating room personnel/ or exp surgeon/

keywords: 
(operating room* or operating theat* or surgical theat* or surgical room* or surg* department* or surg* ward*).ti,ab.

When Ovid won't map to a known MeSH term

OK, here is a weird thing. If you search "documentaries and factual films" in Ovid (note the quotes to deal with the "and"), you will receive the notice: Ovid was unable to map your term 'documentaries and factual films' to a subject heading.

However, this term is definitely a MeSH term. You can find it in the MeSH database (it is a Publication Type), and it has been called this since 2008 (it was called something else 1997-2008).

Weird! Since it is a publication type, we tried searching "documentaries and factual films".pt. in Ovid, and got zero results. Which was a clue, but we didn't know it at the time.

We then thought, OK, we'll search it in PubMed, and find an article, and then look at the Complete Reference for that article.

However, when we searched it in PubMed, it turned out that there were zero results. Not a single document has been labelled with this publication type since 1997!

(Which kind of made us wonder why it is a publication type at all. I mean, why is this a publication type and systematic review is not a publication type?!? But I digress...)

And this explains Ovid's behaviour too. Although the exact algorithm that Ovid uses is proprietary, it's generally known that Ovid takes the term you enter, looks for it in an unknown set of fields in the articles in its database, and then returns the most prevalent MeSH terms in the articles containing that term. Since this is a MeSH term that has never been used, and the phrase is stilted enough that apparently it doesn't appear in any titles and abstracts either, no results were found.

Now, I presumed from some of Ovid's other behaviour, that it searched the MeSH database directly as well as looking for the phrase in the titles, abstracts, and indexing of individual articles. I thought that's why a search for public health returned public health but not public health surveillance and other terms containing the words "public health". I presumed that the algorithm found an exact match in the MeSH database and therefore stopped looking. However, if that were true, then this search would have returned exp "Documentaries and Factual Films"/ with zero results.

No, I think this means that a direct search in the MeSH database is not part of Ovid's mapping algorithm. Instead, I guess it does search of articles every single time, even if the entry is exactly the same as a MeSH term. Then, it must generate a list of potential MeSH, and then (get this!) it must delete all of the other found MeSH if there is an exact match. (Whaaat?!?)

Well, I'm sure that it makes sense to someone, somewhere.

Anyway, if you search a known MeSH in the Ovid interface and get an error message, try confirming in PubMed to see if there are zero results. BTW, typing exp "Documentaries and Factual Films"/ did not produce an error message. There were, of course, zero results.

Thanks to my colleague Robert for bringing this to my attention.