Searching EMBASE Helen Rowlandson Principal Pharmacist Medicines Information London Medicines Information Service (Northwick Park) London

Session aims To understand the concepts of a basic search strategy in Embase To describe the EMTREE thesaurus in detail so that you will be able to apply EMTREE to use Embase efficiently To carry out advanced Embase searches

Plan What is Embase? Medline v Embase EMTREE Dialog Software – searching tools Worked Examples

What is EMBASE? Major biomedical & pharmaceutical database European focus 5,000 journals, 70 countries Subject coverage focuses on human medicine – also includes related disciplines e.g health economics, hospital management What is EMBASE?

EMBASE <> Medline MEDLINE USA coverage 1950 onwards Wide medical coverage In process MeSH indexing EMBASE European coverage 1974 onwards Drug/pharmacology focus Updated faster EMTREE indexing Medline vs EMBASE 30% overlap between the Medline and Embase

Searching EMBASE Controlled vocabulary = EMTREE Uses natural language US spellings rather than British INNs used where possible Acronyms & abbreviations mostly avoided Tree Structure – Hierarchy Indexing: Terms added/Drug names

Open Internet and type: Click “Athens users click here” Right click & then click on “create a shortcut” Enter Athens password Dialog Software EMBASE

Dialog Software Use advanced search (avoid ‘easy search’) Embase 1974 to date or 1996 to date 3 options to search for terms: – Thesaurus mapping – Browse headings – Enter a term EMBASE

Explode – Includes everything below in the tree structure Focus (Major) – Only includes articles where the MeSH heading (descriptor) is the main focus of the article Explode/Focus

Many more subheading options for drugs compared with Medline e.g. diclofenac Subheadings EMBASE

Drug / device trade names can be searched Articles are indexed with trade names when relevant Useful when searching for comparative info e.g. Slophyllin, Uniphyllin Trade names

No real need to do this in EMBASE However it is still possible to do – see drop down menu Most medicines have EMTREE terms – even recently licensed ones CAS numbers

Limit searches in similar way to Medline Two ways of limiting Differences compared to Medline Limits

Publication types have their own facet / tree top of EMTREE terms that are searchable Facet J: types of article or study Build up your search and combine in the usual way (using BOOLEAN) with other search terms Publication types

Are there any papers about SSRIs or SNRIs being used in the treatment of Huntington disease? Worked example 1

Are there any articles which discuss using high dose vitamin supplementation to treat autistic disorders ? Worked example 2 EMBASE

Any questions?