The aim of the publications is to present a vocabulary on bioethics as part of the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) catalog provided by the National Library of Medicine (NLM), Washington (DC). The purpose of the authors is to help researchers to find publications on bioethics and related topics in MEDLINE/PubMed, LOCATORplus and other NLM’s Gateway system databases.

The publications provide information on the subset of keywords in bioethics as well as a list of the Bioethics Thesaurus Keywords and MeSH equivalents. Information is presented on how to use the subset “bioethics”, how to find publications by entering MeSH Headings and free-text queries in MEDLINE/PubMed, and when to use the MeSH Subheading “Ethics”. As well guidance on how to access and use the LOCATORplus database and limiting the retrieval results to bioethics-related publications, searching with MeSH Headings and free text queries is given. 

The 2003 publication has been extended in 2005.

This article investigates databases and search terms to retrieve the most relevant published health economic evaluation studies. The authors searched six bibliographic databases (NHS EED via Cochrane Library and via CRD; PubMed; Embase, EconLit, SciSearch via DialogClassic; and HEED on CD-ROM) using various search strategies. Searching NHS EED plus PubMed was determined to be the best approach. PubMed did not consistently index cost-effectiveness studies, so a combination of the MeSH “Costs and Cost Analysis”, the MeSH subheading “Economics”, and text words were used in the filter.

This research is reported as a conference abstract. The authors report a comparison of searching for papers on the cost-effectiveness threshold using key terms with Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) and pearl growing from a pool of relevant papers. Searching using a search strategy identified 34 papers of which 17 were relevant. Pearl growing identified 76 relevant papers including the 17 already identified. Pearl growing identifies papers and chapters not indexed elsewhere.

The aim of this study was to assess the prevalence of adverse effects terms in the title, abstract, and / or indexing of adverse effects papers published from 2001 onwards and the implications of this on search strategy approaches. A cohort of 242 papers, indexed in MEDLINE, Embase and / or Science Citation Index (SCI), was identified to investigate this and compare the results with a similar study published in 2001 by Derry, Loke and Aronson. Of the 242 papers identified, 231 were indexed in MEDLINE, 222 were indexed in Embase and 238 were indexed in SCI. Searching with generic or specific named adverse effects terms in the title, abstract, or indexing identify 89% of the references indexed in Embase, 80% of the references indexed in Medline and 70% of the references indexed in SCI. Generic adverse effects terms in the title and abstract in any of the 3 databases, generic and specific indexing terms or adverse effects subheadings in Embase, and subheadings for adverse effects in Medline retrieved the highest proportion of references. Compared to previous research findings, adverse effects terms seemed to be increasingly prevalent in the title, abstract and indexing of adverse effects papers in both MEDLINE and Embase.

The aim of the study was to assess how easily one could identify systematic reviews of adverse effects in the two major databases of systematic reviews: the Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects (DARE) and the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (CDSR). A gold standard set of records (270 systematic reviews) was identified from DARE and CDSR by carrying out searches for systematic reviews of adverse effects published from 1994 to 2005. The search strategies used a combination of text words in the title and abstract, subject headings (MeSH) and subheadings. In addition, DARE records in progress were hand searched. The search terms used to identify the systematic reviews were assessed for their usefulness in retrieving relevant records by measuring their sensitivity and precision. The results showed that ‘floating’ subheadings provided the highest sensitivity in both DARE and CDSR (85% and 64% respectively). All single search terms in CDSR resulted in very low precision (0% - 3%). Single MeSH terms provided the highest level of precision in DARE (67%-73%). The most sensitive search strategy in DARE used a combination of text words in the title and abstract, a MeSH term and ‘floating’ subheadings (94%). The precision of this strategy was 16%. In CDSR the most sensitive strategy used the ‘floating’ subheading ‘adverse effects’ and text word search ‘adverse near/20 objectives’ in the abstract field (79%). The precision of this strategy was 3%.

The aim of the study was to measure the sensitivity of published adverse effects search filters in MEDLINE and Embase. The performance of all the individual search terms included in the filters was also measured. The results showed that 93% of the MEDLINE records and 97% of the Embase records could be retrieved by using adverse effects search filters. High sensitivity could also be achieved by using individual adverse effects ‘floating’ subheadings such as Adverse Drug Reaction (83%) or Side Effect (83%) in Embase. In MEDLINE the highest sensitivity using individual adverse effects ‘floating’ subheadings was achieved by using Adverse Effects (51%). Some free text terms for adverse effects in the title and / or abstract were also found to be useful, but the authors recommend applying these terms only concurrently with other search terms such as subheadings. The sensitivity of the few existing indexing terms (MeSH and Emtree) for adverse effects was shown to be low.