Searching EMBASE

Janet West

Principal Pharmacist Medicines Information

Southern General Hospital

NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde

What is EMBASE?What is EMBASE?

Major biomedical & pharmaceutical database

European focusSubject coverage focuses on human

medicine– also includes related disciplines e.g health

economics, hospital management

What is EMBASE?

BackgroundBackground

>11 million records1974 onwards>5000 journals>70 countries~580,000 records added annually~80% records have author written

abstract

Background

EMBASE <> MedlineEMBASE <> Medline

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

Medline vs EMBASE

Make your EMBASE Make your EMBASE searches effective..searches effective..

Searching EMBASE

Controlled vocabulary = EMTREEUses 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 possibleAcronyms & abbreviations mostly avoided

Hierarchical tree consisting of:EMTREE is divided into 15 facets (A

Q)Largest = facet C & facet DC = physical diseases, disorders and

abnormalitiesD = chemicals and drugs (21,000 terms)

EMTREE

‘Explode’ and ‘major’

~20 descriptive terms applied to each record (sometimes many more)

3 – 5 are given importance (major)

Searching EMBASE

Dialog NHS interface:

– Type in words and map to thesaurus

or– Use browse function

or– Enter the term

Searching EMBASE

EMBASE

Many more subheading options for drugs compared with Medlinee.g. diclofenac

Using subheadings

EMBASE

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 ine.g. grapefruit juice

NB - CARE as may not be

a topic of the article

Check date term was added

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’

Free Text

Drug / device trade names can be searched

Articles are indexed with trade names when relevant

Useful when searching for comparative infoe.g. Slophyllin, Uniphyllin

Trade name searching

No real need to do this in EMBASEHowever it is still possible to do – see

drop down menuAll medicines have EMTREE terms –

even recently licensed ones (as far as I can tell!) e.g. duloxetine, rasagiline etc

CAS number searching

Limit searches in similar way to MedlineTwo ways of limitingLess publication type limit options (but see

next slide), less age limit options

EMBASE limits

Publication types have their own facet / tree top of EMTREE terms that are searchable

Facet J: types of article or studyBuild up your search and combine

in the usual way (using BOOLEAN) with other search terms

Publication types

Are there any papers about SSRIs or SNRIs being used in the treatment of Huntington disease?

Worked example 1Worked example 1

Are there any articles which discuss using high dose vitamin supplementation to treat autistic disorders ?

Worked example 2Worked example 2

EMBASE

Any questions?Any questions?