The Internet contains a wealth of medical information on neurosurgical disorders, training programs, practices and doctors, including databases on neurosurgeons and other physicians. However, the jewel of the Net for medicine is the MEDLINE database. With more than 11 million medical bibliographic citations and abstracts from more than 4,000 biomedical journals, it is clearly the world’s premier healthcare database. It facilitates medical research, patient care, and education for countless physicians, students and, increasingly, patients and their families.
In your practice, you can quickly access MEDLINE wherever you have an Internet connection. I currently use PubMed to access MEDLINE. Developed by the National Center for Biotechnology Information at the National Library of Medicine, PubMed allows you to quickly locate abstracts and, in some cases, full-text articles located at Web sites of participating publishers. In addition to MEDLINE, PubMed searches bibliographic information in PreMEDLINE, which contains citation information and abstracts before the citation is indexed and added to MEDLINE. It also can access HealthSTAR, citations supplied by publishers and integrated molecular biology databases.
Searching Tips
So, if you have a medical query, go to PubMed at www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. If you are looking for citations on a specific topic, simply type the name of the topic in the query window and click “Go.” Hundreds and sometimes thousands of citations will appear. The most recent citation appears first.
As you scroll through the list of citations, click the hyperlink of your choice to read the abstract. In an increasing number of cases, you will be able to link to the full- text article at the publisher’s site. Just click the journal icon that appears on the page of most abstracts. Some of these full text articles are free; others are restricted to users with subscriptions or are available for a fee.
As you gain experience in searching, you will want to restrict some of your searches. Select the “Limits” menu item on the top horizontal menu. This will remind you of the Boolean operators-AND, OR, NOT-that can be used to restrict your search. These must be typed in upper case.
Also on the Limits page you can further restrict your search to type of publication, to one of seven languages or to PubMed subsets such as MEDLINE, PreMEDLINE or Toxicology. You can also focus your search by age group, by human or animal studies or by gender. A useful limit is to restrict your search to a certain time frame, such as abstracts published during the year 2000. To return to your original search without limits, just click at the check box next to Limits.
Advanced Searching Tips
If you are looking for a specific reference or full-text article, it is easiest to use the Single Citation Matcher, located on the right side menu. Entering the full name of the journal, the volume and page number of the citation you are searching for will take you directly to the specific citation. You must enter the journal name and the numbers exactly as they are. Or you can search by a variety of other aspects such as author and journal, or author and year.
If you find a citation that is just what you want, a very useful feature is to click the “Related Articles” phrase next to it to refine your search to similar articles. As you gain expertise you may want to store your selected finds in the Clipboard by clicking the “Add to Clipboard” button. You also can review where you have been by clicking the History feature.
If you want to receive a copy of the article, you click “Order” to register with Loansome Doc and arrange for the article to be sent to a library in your area. You can even enter your searches in a reference manager software program in your own computer or save material locally as a text file. The Help-FAQ button reviews all these features.
The full value of MEDLINNE is only appreciated by repeated use. Have no fear. While your first searches may result in more information than you are looking for, over time you will be able to focus your searches for more productive work.
Do you have a puzzling clinical question you need to answer? Are you planning a clinical presentation? The jewel of the Internet can quickly enrich you.
John Oro’, MD, is Professor of Neurosurgery at the University of Missouri. He serves as director-at-large to the AANS Board of Directors. Send your comments and suggestions to Dr. Oro’ at [email protected] .