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

The question was

What are the best current options for the treatment of Graves' Disease in children?

1    *Graves' disease/th [Therapy]    results= 109   
2     limit 1 to (human and english language and review articles    results= 28   
and yr=1991-2000) 3    2 and children.mp. [mp=title, abstract, registry number    results= 4   
word, mesh subject heading]

Reference Librarian comments

Oooh, be careful with that "therapy" subheading. Common sense would tell you that there are all kinds of therapy. But MEDLINE doesn't follow common-sense rules at all. To MEDLINE, "therapy" does not include "drug therapy." (Or psychological therapy or radiotherapy or surgery, etc. etc.). It's awful. It's a MEDLINE "gotcha."

Look at set #1 below, where I did pretty-much the same thing that you did, but I used more "therapeutic" subheadings. I get way more. Then I was interested in what happens when we ask for only "drug therapy" of Graves' disease -- that result is set #2.

Other than that, the only other thing to tell you is that limiting to children is best done through the "Limit" page (which you get to, in Ovid, by clicking on the "arrow and target" icon up at the top...).

 1
 exp *Graves' disease/pc,dt,px,rt,su,th [Prevention & Control, Drug Therapy, Psychology,
 Radiotherapy, Surgery, Therapy]
 617

 2
 exp *graves' disease/dt
 215

 3
 limit 2 to (human and english language)
 167

 4
 limit 3 to (newborn infant < birth to 1 month > or infant < 1 to 23 months > or preschool
 child < 2 to 5 years > or child < 6 to 12 years > or adolescence < 13 to 18 years >)
 37