32 Alternate forms of Terms
Now that you have a list of alternate terms for your neuropathy concept, ask yourself whether your search should include any of the types of term variants listed below (or include truncated terms that would retrieve these variants):
Please note: the examples listed below are not necessarily relevant to the tutorial search!
- singular and plural forms of any nouns
ex. include either —
neuropath*
— or —
neuropathy OR neuropathies - all forms of any verbs
ex. either —
erod*
— or —
erode OR erodes OR eroded OR eroding - noun forms of any verbs
ex. either —
erod* OR erosion*
— or —
erode OR erodes OR eroded OR eroding OR erosion OR erosions - adjective forms of any nouns
ex. include either —
neuropath*
— or —
neuropathic OR neuropathy OR neuropathies - British as well as American spellings
ex.
hematology OR haematology - nonhyphenated and hyphenated forms of words that are sometimes hyphenated
ex.
post-operative OR postoperative - commonly used abbreviations as well as non-abbreviated terms
ex.
ICU OR ICUs OR “intensive care unit” OR “intensive care units” - relevant opposites
e.g. If your search included a safety concept, in addition to the safety words, you would need to include danger/harzard/etc. words since authors may talk about “methods for avoiding inherent dangers.”
Add additional terms to your list until you can answer yes or not applicable to each of the above questions.
Listed below are neuroopathy terms you should have ‘harvested’ from the MeSH database. Have you included either all the terms in the first column or all the truncated terms in the second column in your list of terms?
| neuropathy
neuropathies neuropathic palsy palsies palsied mononeuropathy Mononeuropathies mononeuropathic Amyotrophy Amyotrophies amyotrophic polyneuropathy Polyneuropathies polyneuropathic Neuralgia Neuralgias neuralgic |
Neuropath*
palsy palsies palsied mononeuropath* Amyotroph* Polyneuropath* Neuralgi*
|
Add any terms that you missed to your list.
Create a search statement from your terms.
- Enclose any multi-word terms (terms containing spaces) within quotation marks.
- Consider truncating any multi-syllable word that has multiple useful endings using an asterisk * (e.g. polyneuropath* can replace polyneuropathy, polyneuropathies, and polyneuropathic).
- Remove any search terms that are no longer needed.
- Join the alternate terms for a single concept using OR.
- Place parentheses around the OR’d together term list.