On Doctoring MEDLINE searches, with reference librarian comments, March 2000

The question was

What are the implications of breast cancer in estrogen replacement therapy for treatment of osteoporosis in posmenopausal women?

1     Estrogens, conjugated/ or Estrogens, non-steroidal/    results=1100   
2     Osteomalacia/ or Osteoporosis/ or Osteoporosis,    results=8076   
postmenopausal/
3     1 and 2    results= 82   
4     Estrogen replacement therapy/ae [Adverse Effects]    results= 1155      
5     3 and 4    results= 8

Reference Librarian comments

Good job. I wish you would almost always "explode" the medical subject heading, but you were thinking nicely here. I did the search in a purposefully different way, just for fun. I sometimes like to "throw out" a concept, especially when there are three or more, and see what happens. I did something like this:

exp *estrogen replacement therapy/ae,ct,ut,mo [adverse effects, contraindications, utilization, mortality]

exp *breast neoplasms/et [etiology]

1 and 2

.... (thus just forgetting about osteoporosis...)

... and after limiting to Human and English, got 40 references.

Thanks for participating in the exercise...