Veterinary Medicine

PubMed

PubMed is an essential database for the health professions. It has over 34 million citations from all facets of biomedical literature. PubMed consists of Pre-Medline, Medline, and PubMed Central (PMC) articles. Navigating PubMed requires understanding Medical Subject Headings (MeSH), key terminology, and Boolean operators. 

MeSH Database

Medical Subject Headings, or MeSH, are the National Library of Medicine (NLM) controlled vocabulary thesaurus used to index articles within PubMed.

• To maximize search results, find the MeSH terms, first.
  • Expand upon MeSH terms with laymen's terms, Latin terms, veterinary medical related terms, etc.
• For a full list of MeSH tutorials, please visit their website here.

One-on-one training in MeSH is available to you. Please contact Andi Parrish, for an individual appointment; or, you can schedule an appointment with Andi Parrish here.

Search Methodologies

Searching in PubMed can be a bit laborious if it is a database you are not somewhat familiar with. However, it is easily navigated with a few in-depth understandings about how the database works. Our goal is to move searches from a "good enough" search to a solid, well-thought out search.

The best way to approach PubMed searches is to come up with a list of synonyms, or related terms, for every term you need to search for. Find the MeSH term, first, and then build from there.

Example: dirofilariasis, dirofilaria immitis, heartworm, heartworms, "heart worm," "heart worms" 

Spelling matters! In PubMed, spelling will change the outcome of results. Sometimes, this is drastic. "Heartworm," for instance, yields 1,319 results whereas "heart worm" yields 25 results. Likewise, heart worm, without quotation marks, yields 2,683 results.

Utilizing Boolean Logic is crucial. For more information on Boolean operators, click here.

Constructing a Search

1. In the search field, search for one term at a time without regarding the results. This saves your search terms in a search history that you can utilize later.
2. Once all similar terms are searched for, click on "Advanced" beneath the search field box.
3. On the first term you want to add, click the ellipses (...) next to the term and select "add query."
   
4. On the second term you want to add, click the ellipses (...) next to the term and select "Add with OR." 
   
5. Once all similar terms are added using OR, select "Search" located right of the search field.
6. Repeat these steps for all terms and their synonyms.
7. Once all similar terms are combined using OR, select the ellipses (...) next to the first string of words and select "add query." 
8. Select the ellipses (...) next to the second string of words and select "Add with AND." 
   
9. Repeat this step for all unlike terms.
10. Once all terms are combined using Boolean, select "search" located on the right side of the search field.

Saving Searches

1. Log in to your MyNCBI account.
   Note: the log in page has changed. On the top of the page, select "Log in" and then select "other login options" from the bottom of the list. Find Kansas State University and log in with your eID and password. 
2. Click on number results for the search you would like to save located on the advanced screen.
3. Click "Create alert" under the search field.
4. Fill out the pertinent information.
5. Click "Save."

Any alerts you create are automatically saved in your MyNCBI dashboard under "Saved Searches."