PT 7327: Research in Physical Therapy I: DATABASE QUICK FACTS!

Quick facts about specific databases used in Physical Therapy research.

MEDLINE Complete

• U.S. National Library Medicine’s bibliographic database
• Millions of journal articles, including randomized controlled trials and systematic reviews, in the life sciences with a focus on biomedicine
• Searching: 
  • Boolean: AND, OR, NOT
  • Phrase Searching
  • Truncation
• MeSH Thesaurus for subject terms

PubMed

• Access through library databases (will have Check for full text @ TX State option for articles)
• Can also access the public version online – PubMed public access (will not have the option to check for full text at TX State)
• Narrow results to specific types of Evidence-Based Research (e.g. clinical trial, meta-analysis, randomized controlled trial, systematic review)
• Article Record:
  • MeSH terms for article listed at bottom of page.
  • Includes Similar articles
    • Scroll down to bottom of article record to see list
  • Includes “Cited by” articles that have cited the article
    • Scroll down to bottom of article record to see list
• Searching:
  • Don’t use Boolean operator AND (database assumes the terms are connected by AND) or punctuation
    • If used, they disable PubMed’s automatic term mapping feature which maps keyword searches to MeSH terms.

Cochrane Library

• Collection of evidence-based medicine databases, including but not limited to:

• Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (CDSR) – top resource for systematic reviews
• Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials –randomized and quasi-randomized controlled trials

• Systematic reviews mainly focus on interventions
• Searching:
  • On search interface, click on Advanced Search
  • Use Boolean (AND, OR, NOT), phrase searching, truncation
  • After typing in search terms, if you click “Send to search manager” the database will list the search and number of results
  • Look up MeSH terms by click the “Medical terms (MeSH) tab and searching for term.
  • Limit search results (Content type, publication date, etc…) by clicking on “Search limits.”

PEDro

• Provided by the University of Sydney
• Open Access database – freely available on the Internet
• Contains randomized trials, systematic reviews, and clinical practice guidelines specific to physical therapy
  • main focus is interventions
• Searching:
  • Simple Search:  allows phrase searching and truncation;  No Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT)
  • Advanced Search:  Combination of search boxes and dropdowns
  • Results list cannot be filtered or limited