Searching biomedical databases on complementary medicine: the use of controlled vocabulary among authors, indexers and investigators

Table 3 Frequency of spinal terms in titles, abstracts, and four databases

Spinal Terms Used in Search Strategies	Titles n = 38	Abstracts n = 37¹	MEDLINE (mh) n = 29²	MANTIS (de) n = 28²	CINAHL (sh) n = 13²	Web of Science n = 26^2,3,4
Cervical vertebrae [mh] [sh] [de] / cervical	10	15	8	7	4	2
Lumbar vertebrae [mh] [sh] [de] /lumbar	3	6	1	7	2	4
Neck [mh] [sh] [de]		5	5	2	2	0
Para-spine, para-spinal		1
Spine [mh] [sh] [de] / Spinal	14	21	15	8	4	8
Thoracic vertebrae [mh] [sh] [de] / thoracic	1	2	1	3
Vertebral	2	4		4

[mh] = Medical Subject Headings in MEDLINE; [pt] = publication type in MEDLINE; [sh] = Subject Heading in CINAHL [de] = Descriptor in MANTIS Note: ¹One study did not have an abstract online. ²Not all studies had abstracts. ³Web of Science does not have a controlled vocabulary. ⁴Eleven studies had no keywords generated. * is a truncation symbol for a wild card search in PubMed and Web of Science.

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