MEDLINE
Search Strategies: High
Blood Pressure
These recommendations are based on the PubMed interface
to MEDLINE.
In mid-2006, there
were more than a quarter of a million citations to articles about hypertension
in MEDLINE, so some care must be taken in formulating focused search
strategies. This is best accomplished by using takng advantage of MEDLINE's
indexing by Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) and related subheadings.
If you begin your
search by clicking on the link to the MeSH
database on the left-hand side of the PubMed opening screen and
type hypertension into the search box, you will find more than a dozen
MeSH entries related to the word "hypertension." One of these
is the MeSH "hypertension." Clicking on this link, you will
see this
page, where you can begin constructing a hypertenion search that
is limited to specific subheadings. In addition, you can restrict your
search to those papers in which hypertension (or hypertension resticted
to specific subheadings) was the major topic of the article.
Here is
an example of a search that is limited to hypertension/prevention
and control as a major topic.
Additonal MeSH can be added to further narrow the search.
If we wanted
to know something about preventing hypertension among African
Americans, we would start with the steps above (hypertension as
a major topic, limited to the subheading prevention and control).
Then, instead of searching PubMed, we would enter another term
into the MeSH database. Trying "blacks" we see that "African
Continental Ancestry Group" is MeSH. Clicking
on this link, we
see that it is indeed the MeSH for "blacks," but looking at the
relation of this term to other MeSH (bottom of the page), we see
that "African
Americans" is more specific. Clicking on the check box for
African Americans and sending it to the search box, we have the
search strategy "Hypertension/prevention and control"[MAJR]
AND "African Americans"[MeSH]. Clicking on the "Search
PubMed" button, we see these
results -- fewer than one hundred articles on preventing hypertension
among African Americans.
Here is an example
of a search that is limited to hypertension/epidemiology
as a major topic and further limited (AND) by the MeSH "United
States." This search was recently used to determine the
prevalence of hypertension in the U.S. Click on the "details" button
to see how the search was formulated (in MEDLINE's language).
Because non-optimal
blood pressures (those > 115 mm hg) are a significant contributor
to morbidity and mortality, the MeSH blood
pressure might be frutifully employed...
