Phrase Searching in PubMed

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When searching for a multiple word concept in PubMed, you will often get significantly different numbers of results if you do not use quotation marks around the terms as compared to using quotation marks.  Here is an example:

lymph node dissection – 40,235

“lymph node dissection” – 10,124

When you search for a concept without quotation marks, you will retrieve records which contain synonyms for the terms you entered as well as vocabulary (MeSH) terms for the concept.  For lymph node dissection, records with the term lymph node excision will be returned, as well as those appended with the MeSH term, lymph node excision.

Fewer records will be retrieved with “lymph node dissection” since all results must contain this exact phrase.

 

MSKCC in the News: December 26 – January 9

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  • Lorus Therapeutics Inc. announced that its Phase I clinical study, conducted at MSKCC and the MD Anderson Cancer Center, of LOR-253 has successfully escalated to the target dose level based on predicted and observed clinical effects without limitation by toxicity.
  • MSKCC’s Dr. Peter Bach was quoted in a Reuters article about a study that found that pediatricians-in-training are more likely to plan to go into primary care – rather than a specialty field – if they have lots of debt from college and medical school.
  • MSKCC was featured in Health Magazine’s top 12 medical breakthroughs of 2012.