Medical Oncology & Hematology

Contact your library staff to learn how to craft effient and strategic search strategies using a combination of natural language (keyword) searching and controlled vocabulary (MeSh) searching! Combination searching leverages a variety of techniques to find as many synonyms as possible. Language changes along with current science. 

 Please keep in mind that the following suggested terms are specific to Pubmed. Terminology across databases is sometimes but usually not a direct translation. 

Pubmed terminology for identifying literature on the subject of hematology:

• Mesh headings: "Hematology"[Mesh], "Hematologic Tests"[Mesh], 
• Keywords/Phrases: Hematology, Hematologic Diseases, Hematology tests, Hematological tests, Blood tests, Blood cell count, complete blook counts, etc
• Title/Abstract field code: use [tiab] to search a term in both title and abstract (Ex: hematologic-diseases[tiab] returns results with this phrase occuring in either title OR abstract).

Pubmed terminology for identifying literature on the subject of Medical Oncology

• Mesh headings: "Medical Oncology"[Mesh], "Surgical Oncology"[Mesh], "Radiation Oncology"[Mesh], 
• Keywords/Phrases: Clinical Oncology, Medical Oncology, Neoplasms
• Title/Abstract field code: use [tiab] to search a term in both title and abstract (Ex: medical-oncology[tiab] returns results with this phrase occuring in either title OR abstract).

Protip: a hyphen is interpreted by Pubmed as a double parenthesis and therefore conducts a phrase search.

Example: Hematologic-diseases will be treated as a phrase search. The hyphen is universally interpreted across databases as a phrase search! (Not all databases interpret a double parenthesis as a phrase search)

Protip: the asterisk command is used to truncate a term and find all its variations. Example: Oncolog* will find: oncology, oncologic. Example: Diagnos* will find: diagnose, diagnostic, diagnosis, diagnoses, etc.