3. Strategies

6. PICO Analysis Morbidity or mortality O utcomes Diuretics or other drugs C omparision Beta-bockers I ntervention Hypertensive elderly P atients Type of Study Design: Look for systematic reviews, meta-analyses or randomized controlled trials. Question Type: Therapy or what is the effectiveness of beta-blockers vs. diuretics or other drugs for the initial treatment of hypertension in the elderly?

7. Search Strategy Summary randomized controlled trial Fourth Concept Beta-blockers Third Concept elderly Second Concept hypertension First Concept

27. Comparison of PubMed and OVID Web/CD-ROM: Fee-based Web: Free Access Text word will search title, abstract, registry number word, and MeSH fields. Searches text word as entered. Maps to relevant subject heading. If no match is found, searches all fields. Text word searching gateway.ovid.com pubmed.gov URL OVID PubMed Search Engine

28. OVID PubMed Search Engine If selected, the system automatically maps to a MeSH term. Searcher must verify/select a term for it to be used. Can choose to EXPLODE (exp eye) or Focus (*eye) a MeSH term. Pre-MEDLINE available as seperate file - use text word searching. Uses automatic term mapping. Terms are matched against MeSH, Journal title table, Phrase list and Author index. MeSH browser allows selection of specific subject headings. Automatically EXPLODEs MeSH terms and subheadings. Can turnoff EXPLODE (eye[mh:noexp]) for subject headings, but not for subheadings. Can MAJOR (eye[major]) or FOCUS a MeSH term. Searching with MeSH excludes IN PROCESS and Publisher-Supplied citations Subject searching

29. OVID PubMed Search Engine Variable Most recent first. Order of Citations Statements should be field qualified: Use $ or : to retrieve unlimited suffix variations (computer$.ti.) Use # to replace exactly one character (wom#n.ti.) Use? to replace 0 to 1 characters (labo?r) Right-handed truncation only (elder*). No internal truncation. Truncation turns off automatic mapping to MeSH term and turns off EXPLODE. Truncation Yes. Statements should be field qualified: Pregnancy tests.tw. Adjacency is assumed. (information adjX retrieval).tw. Retrieves phrases in which "information" and "retrieval" are within X words of one another. Searches from a predigested set of phrases. Does not do true adjacency searching. Enclosing a phrase within quotes bypasses automatic term mapping. Phrase searching

30. OVID PubMed Search Engine Available on search page: English language, human only, review articles, articles with abstracts. Many additional limits available under the "limits" button on separate page. Can choose multiple entries from menu boxs. Can limit word or phrase search to particular field of document: title, author, abstract, publication type, and >40 other specific fields. Example is: eye.ti. Limits: Language, year of publication, publication type, human or animal, document subset (AIDS, Bioethics, Cancer, Complementary Medicine, Core collection journals, toxicology, etc), age, searching only in a particular field (title word, title/abstract word, author, etc). Can only choose single entry from menu boxes. Limits

31. OVID PubMed Search Engine Links to full-text journals and "EBM Reviews" with subscription. Continuously running history on search page permits combination of any number of search lines. Can save searches for 24 hours or permanently. Can email search. PreMEDLINE available as separate database. "Clinical Queries" and "Systematic Reviews" and Quality or Cost-related research filters (EBM quality filter search features.) Journals Database; Citation Matcher; Cubby; Links to related articles; Links to full-text articles (most subscription based). Includes citations to other related databases: PreMEDLINE,Toxicology, etc. "History" permits refinement of search using a combination of previous search statements. Can email search retrieval. Extra Features

32. Searching Web EBM Resources

36. This table uses OVID truncation symbols. For PubMed searching use the asterisk (*). Note: An effective search strategy usually combines both subject terms and text words. diuretics (MeSH) geriat$ (truncated text word) OR OR OR Mortality (MeSH) Adrenergic beta-antagonists (MeSH) elder$ (truncated text word) OR OR OR Morbidity (MeSH) AND beta-blockers (text word) AND older (text word) AND hypertension (MeSH) Outcome Interventions/ Comparison Patient Population Combine With Combine With Combine With