On Doctoring MEDLINE searches, with reference librarian comments

The question was

... "He wanted to know what information there was
on diagnosis and conventional treatments of Fibromyalgia. I added in
the search for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome because the two diseases
often seem to occur together and we had seen just one such case
recently (and the fibromyalgia search seemed too expansive). I hope
this helps."

1 :  exp *Fibromyalgia/di,dt,rh [Diagnosis, Drug Therapy,         {232}
Rehabilitation]
2 :  limit 1 to (local holdings and human and english language)         {100}
3 :  exp *Fatigue syndrome, chronic/di,dt,rh [Diagnosis, Drug         {279}
Therapy, Rehabilitation]
4 :  limit 3 to (human and english language)         {233}
5 :  2 and 4         {6}
6 :  from 5 keep 1,3,5-6         {4}
7 :  from 5 keep 1-6          {6}

Reference Librarian comments

You've completed the assignment, and showed quite clearly that you're
using MEDLINE just fine. You're "exploding" and "focusing" and
"limiting" and combining sets, etc. Congratulations. Great job.

BUT: I feel that you made one mistake. It's a big one, in my
opinion. But innocently done, etc. Let me see if I can explain. I
think that ANDing the CFS to the Fibromyalgia is excessively
restrictive, and it gave you way too few references to look at. Yes,
CFS can occur with Fibromyalgia, but to tell MEDLINE that they MUST
be coordinated gives you next to nothing.

re: the subheadings you picked. You picked "Drug Therapy" and
"Rehabilitation" and those are, of course, the big obvious ones, but
there are also: "Diet Therapy," "Nursing," "Prevention & Control,"
"Psychology," "Radiotherapy," and "Therapy."

(Sure, "Radiotherapy" seems highly unlikely. But checking the box
will have no ill effect. If there are no articles on the
Radiotherapy of Fibromyalgia, then fine. If there are, we'll want to
have that surprise...) [Actually, I just checked. There is one
article!]

I have a personal style of wanting to make TWO searches out of things
when someone says "Diagnosis" and "Therapy" -- just so I can keep
things separate and manageable. (When you combine them, you don't
really know how many of the references have to do with Diagnosis and
how many have to do with the therapies.)