I want to search through EMBASE for a systematic review, but I don’t know how to make my search strategy. EMBASE has different search tabs (Quick, PICO, Advanced) that have me confused.
1- Which one of these tabs should I use for a systematic search?
2- What does explosion do?
3- How should I build my search strategy? based on explosion or ti/ab or both? Should I add a search term like metformin once with exp and one with ti/ab? What about other options in quick tab like “Emtree term, exploded” or “Emtree-major focuse exp”?
4- What about Emtree terms? Should I use them and if yes, how?
I’d appreciate it if you could answer these questions or refer me elsewhere.
Thank you in advance
Hi,
It mainly depend on your research question. In Embase, you should use PICO for systematic search.
Please refer to the following document. You will get insight about sys. rev. in Embase. It has also elaborated about Emtree.
http://supportcontent.elsevier.com/Support%20Hub/Embase/Files%20&%20Attachements/5513-EmbaseE201-Systematic%20Reviews-April%202015.pdf
I hope it will help
Regards: Mehul
Hi Aliye,
The principles of running a systematic search would be similar across the different databases (EMBASE, MEDLINE, etc), these include identifying the concepts in your research question, and expanding and intersecting concepts sequentially, etc. The interface may be slightly different but you will find that the databases often have analogous functionalities.
A simplified, step-by-step guide to running literature searches can be found on Chapter 9 of the book Painless Evidence-Based Medicine: https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Painless+Evidence+Based+Medicine%2C+2nd+Edition-p-9781119196242
Part 2, Chapter 6 of The Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews is on "Searching for Studies" and discusses some key issues on running literature searches: http://handbook-5-1.cochrane.org/
If you are familiar with running systematic searches on MEDLINE/PubMed, the videos on this link from Dalhousie University may help to get you oriented to the EMBASE interface: http://dal.ca.libguides.com/systematicreviews/searching
Hope these are helpful.
Elenore
Mehul Kumar Chourasia
Hi. I checked the link. thank you, it was very helpful, though I need to read it some more to get a grasp of it. so it is PICO in EMBASE? I did a search with ti/ab/author/keyword (it had a 90% overlap with pubmed results). Is using quick tab with this filter wrong? also I saw some search strategies use both exp and ti/ab for one same term, and I didn't get why and what's the difference, any insight?
thank you again. Aliye
Elenore Uy
Hi. thank you Elenore for your great insight. I'll read/watch the links. It is my first attempt to do a systematic search, so I'm mostly in learning phase. I'm familiar with running a systematic review in Pubmed, Pubmed was quite simple I guess (or I'm still not practiced enough in it to know it compeletly). EMBASE was a mystery though.
thank you for your helpful answer.
Aliye
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