Searching EMBASE Janet West Principal Pharmacist Medicines Information Southern General Hospital NHS Greater Glasgow &am

1. Searching EMBASE Janet West Principal Pharmacist Medicines Information Southern General Hospital NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde

2. What is EMBASE? What is EMBASE? • Major biomedical & pharmaceutical database • European focus • Subject coverage focuses on human medicine • also includes related disciplines e.g health economics, hospital management

3. Background Background • >11 million records • 1974 onwards • >5000 journals • >70 countries • ~580,000 records added annually • ~80% records have author written abstract

4. EMBASE <> Medline Medline vs EMBASE • EMBASE indexes more drug related literature • EMBASE covers more European & Far Eastern journals • Medline covers more US journals • EMBASE is updated faster – average = 10 - 15 working days for full article to appear c.f. 6-8 weeks for Medline (30% within 30 days , 60% within 60 days) • Overlap between Medline & Embase = ~30% therefore always search both

5. Make your EMBASE searches effective..

6. Searching EMBASE • Controlled vocabulary = EMTREE • Uses natural language e.g. chronic fatigue syndrome [EMBASE] v fatigue syndrome, chronic [Medline] • US spellings rather than British e.g. estrogen rather than oestrogen • INNs used where possible • Acronyms & abbreviations mostly avoided

7. EMTREE • Hierarchical tree consisting of: • EMTREE is divided into 15 facets (A  Q) • Largest = facet C & facet D • C = physical diseases, disorders and abnormalities • D = chemicals and drugs (21,000 terms)

8. Searching EMBASE • ‘Explode’ and ‘major’ • ~20 descriptive terms applied to each record (sometimes many more) • 3 – 5 are given importance (major)

9. Searching EMBASE • Dialog NHS interface: • Type in words and map to thesaurus or • Use browse function or • Enter the term EMBASE

10. Using subheadings • Many more subheading options for drugs compared with Medline e.g. diclofenac EMBASE

11. Check date term was added • Must check when a term was added (in scope note – yellow post-it note) • May need to search free text as well to pick up articles before the entry date of that term with these words in e.g. grapefruit juice NB - CARE as may not be a topic of the article

12. Free Text • Free text searches also useful when:- • there is no appropriate match in the EMTREE thesaurus for your term, • the concept is very new to the literature, or • the concept has a very specific name, such as ‘Waterlow Score’

13. Trade name searching • Drug / device trade names can be searched • Articles are indexed with trade names when relevant • Useful when searching for comparative info e.g. Slophyllin, Uniphyllin

14. CAS number searching • No real need to do this in EMBASE • However it is still possible to do – see drop down menu • All medicines have EMTREE terms – even recently licensed ones (as far as I can tell!) e.g. duloxetine, rasagiline etc

15. EMBASE limits • Limit searches in similar way to Medline • Two ways of limiting • Less publication type limit options (but see next slide), less age limit options

16. Publication types • Publication types have their own facet / tree top of EMTREE terms that are searchable • Facet J: types of article or study • Build up your search and combine in the usual way (using BOOLEAN) with other search terms

17. Worked example 1 • Are there any papers about SSRIs or SNRIs being used in the treatment of Huntington disease?

19. Worked example 2 • Are there any articles which discuss using high dose vitamin supplementation to treat autistic disorders ? EMBASE

21. Any questions?