Objective 2. Steps in a MeSH: Adding Non-Drug Headings
Look up MeSH for Disease (or other non-drug) Concepts
Search
- Look at your “PubMed search builder” box to be sure the formatted MeSH or Supplementary Concept for the drug concept is present. If so, it’s time to proceed to the disease/non-drug concepts in your search.
- Type paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria into the MeSH search box (red box in figure below)
- Click the “Search” button or hit the “Enter” key on the keyboard.
Select the best heading
Did your MeSH database search retrieve a single heading or supplementary concept, or, alternatively, did it retrieve a list of headings and supplementary concepts?
- If you see a list of headings and/or supplementary concepts rather than a single heading/supplementary concept, click on the most appropriate term in the list.
Once you are viewing the detailed entry for a single heading or supplementary concept,
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- Read the definition that appears immediately below the heading or concept. Sometimes the definition contains alternate headings (in all CAPS) that are more appropriate for a search. Does a more appropriate heading appear in all CAPS in the definition for your MeSH or Supplementary Concept? If so, search the MeSH database for that term.
- Scroll down the page to look for a “see also” list . If a “see also” list is present below the “Entry term” list, is a more appropriate heading/supplementary concept listed
- If you are looking at the entry for a MeSH heading, scroll down to see the MeSH tree. Do you see a more appropriate heading in the MeSH tree?
“Hemoglobinuria, Paroxysmal” happens to be the narrowest heading in two MeSH trees. If you are working on a non-tutorial search, your heading may appear above narrower headings. Remember, PubMed explodes by default. This means that, unless you check the “Do not include MeSH terms found below this term in the MeSH hierarchy” box, Pubmed will retrieve any records indexed with your heading, and also any records retrieved with the narrower headings.
- If you see a more appropriate heading or supplementary concept, click on, or search for, that term.
(In this case, the “Hemoglobinuria, Paroxysmal” is the best heading choice.)
Do you want a subheading?
- Scroll back up to the list of subheadings available for “Hemoglobinuria, Paroxysmal”.
(When you work on your group projects, you may add subheadings to your disease headings. Remember: “Therapy” is a broad subheading that will retrieve records indexed with “therapy”, “diet therapy”, “drug therapy”, “nursing”, “prevention and control”, “radiotherapy”, “rehabilitation”, “surgery”, and “transplantation”. It’s important to include the broader heading if you want to find articles that touch on multi-modal therapy, e.g. drugs and nursing care. )
Add to the “PubMed Search Builder”
- After selecting the appropriate subheading/s (if any), scroll up to the PubMed Search Builder.
- Do you want to join this concept to the concept already present in the search builder with OR, AND, or NOT? Make the appropriate selection.
- Click on the “Add to Search Builder” button.
Make a note of the “Date Introduced”
Before moving on to the next search concept, make a note of the year when this heading was first used (the “Year Introduced”)
Repeat the steps above for the “Thrombosis” heading and the “therapy” subheading.
- Repeat the steps above for the final search concept.
Before proceeding, consider the questions below:
Did you end up with the search shown below?
(((“eculizumab” [Supplementary Concept]) AND “Hemoglobinuria, Paroxysmal”[Mesh]) AND “Embolism and Thrombosis”[Mesh]) AND “therapy” [Subheading]
Some of you may have used the “Thrombosis”[mesh] heading rather than switching to the broader “Embolism and Thrombosis”[mesh] heading when you reviewed the “Thrombosis” heading tree. The “Thrombosis” headings is a reasonable choice. I chose the broader heading because, after years of searching experience, I’ve learned that a disease that can cause thrombosis can almost always cause embolism as well.
Have you made a note of the “Year introduced” for the additional heading/subheadings? If so you should have a list of the introduction dates for each headings, heading/subheading, or floating subheading included in your search. The list for the tutorial search is shown below:
eculizumab [Supplementary Concept] February 18, 2004
Hemoglobinuria, Paroxysmal 1978
therapy [Subheading] 1966
What is the oldest publication you can trust your search to retrieve?
What is the most recent of your heading and/or subheading introduction dates? Does the search require that this heading or subheading be present in all records retrieved? If so, you cannot trust the search to retrieve any literature published earlier than that date. For the tutorial search this date is February 18, 2004.
Note:
Headings/subheadings without dates were used when MEDLINE was created.
Most headings are first introduced in the latter part of the year (October -December). Let’s pretend that you are using this tutorial to guide your group project work and the introduction dates of your headings suggest that your search would cover literature back to 2000. This means that your search covers items added to MEDLINE from approximately October -December 2000 to the present.
Are using this tutorial to guide your group project search? If so, does your search include more than one heading for a single concept? If so, check to be sure that the concepts for that single concept are OR’d together and enclosed in a set of parentheses. Check also to be sure that there are no un-paired parentheses inside the parentheses that define a concept.
- When you’re satisfied with your search statement, click the “Search PubMed” button.
