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Too Few Results - Expanding Your Results

1) If too few results, click on Advanced under the PubMed Search box.

Screenshot showing Advanced link in PubMed

2) Brainstorm keywords that mean the same thing as your original search terms. Please see the worksheet linked below.

3) Now that you've brainstormed, in the Advanced Search enter your search terms in the top query box, using the word OR between each search term, for example:  "heart attack" or "heart attacks" or "myocardial infarction" or "myocardial infarctions". Note:  You can try using abbreviations / acronyms in PubMed, but there is such vast biomedical information in this database that it is often not helpful. Click on ADD once you've entered your search terms to add it to the Query box.

Screenshot of step 3

4. In the above step, notice you left the drop-down menu at All Fields. This helps you to expand your search. You can always switch this to Title if ultimately overwhelmed with results. 

5) Now that you've added your brainstormed search string for your condition, it's time to add a search string for guidelines. Enter:  guidelines or consensus    Do consider switching the drop-down menu from All Fields to Title to try to make it more on topic, then click on AND to add it to the lower Query box

Screenshot of step 5

6) Notice the Query box. This is "database speak". The Advanced Search in databases helps you to correctly build your search. Click on Search and hopefully you've found your guideline.

7) Still haven't found the needed guideline? Try using the other tabs in this guide for more strategies, or:

What search terms should I use?

Think of words that mean the same thing

Guidelines are also sometimes called consensus statements. In an advanced search, you may want to consider using:   guidelines or consensus

 

For the condition, if there are alternate terms, also use those!  For example: "myocardial infarction" or "myocardial infarctions" or "heart attack" or "heart attacks"

Note: For the above search string, whenever you use quote marks, it tells the database (even Google) that the keywords must appear exactly as between quotes. Because of this both the singular and plural forms were used. Additionally, MI was not used, because this would likely bring up too many unwanted results.