Drug Info: Secondary Resources

What is a bibliographic service designed to help retrieve journal articles

Secondary resource

Name 2 advantages of a secondary resource:

1. Quick access to the primary literature

2. Review a select segment of the primary literature

Name 4 disadvantages of a secondary resource:

1. Number of journals covered

2. Scope of coverage

3. Consider lag time

4. Some sources require training to use effectively

What is a reference to an article called? It usually includes the title of the article, the author(s), and the name of the journal (including year, volume, number/issue, pages).

Citation

What are the considerations in using secondary resources?

1. Scope of coverage (what is the focus?)

2. The country in which it is published

3. Language

4. Lag time (article gets published > database > end user)

5. Availability/cost

6. Ease of use (controlled vocab)

What does it mean to search by text word?

A “text word” search will search for that word or phrase in the following fields: title, abstract, MeSH headings and subheadings, and all other fields

Disadvantages of searching by text word

1. Results in a search strategy that is too broad in scope

2. Often identifies articles that may be irrelevant to your topic

3. Will miss articles that do not have the text word in the title, abstract, MeSH, or other fields, but are indexed under related MeSH terms

When should text words be used in a search stratergy?

• Generally used when there are no MeSH headings available for a specific concept or when the MeSH is not specific enough

• Sometimes useful in identifying appropriate MeSH heading(s) to search under

What is used for indexing articles, cataloging books, and other holdings within NLM that provides a consistent way to retrieve information that may use different terminology for the same concepts?

Medical Subject Headings (MeSH)

What can be used to limit searches to specific aspect of the MeSH heading?

Subheadings

T/F: Use of MeSH heading/subheading combinations may result in poor search results if all pertinent subheadings are not considered?

True

You are an intern on your internal medicine rotation and are rounding with the academic medicine team.

One of your patients has heart failure and is not responding as expected to drug therapy. The team talks about several options, including metolazone and chlorothiazide in this scenario. You are tasked with investigating whether these drugs have ever been compared in a randomized controlled trial.

1. What search terms would you use to create this Medline search? Categorize the search terms as MeSH, supplementary concept, or text word.

2. What filters, if any, would you use to perform this search?

3. Provide the citation for this article

answer from slide 20-21:

1. #1 Chlorothiazide [MeSH] , #2 Metolazone [MeSH] , #3 Heart failure [MeSH] , #1 AND #2 AND #3

2. Randomized controlled trial, English, Human

3. Cox ZL, Hung R, Lenihan DJ, et al. Diuretic strategies for loop diuretic resistance in acute heart failure: the 3T trial. JACC Heart Fail. 2020; 8(3):157-68.

A concise summary of a research article, clinical trial, or study that highlights the background/importance, objective, study design, setting, participants, interventions, primary outcome measures, results, and conclusions.

Abstract