Adding Study Type or Study Characteristics to Your Medline Search Using Medical Subject Headings

When searching Medline, you may want to limit your results to articles detailing a particular type of study. First, try to limit your results using the "Limits" icon in Ovid Medline or PubMed. Under "Additional Limits" you can limit your results to Clinical Trials, Case Reports, Meta analysis, or Randomized Controlled Trial. But, if these limits do not suit your needs, you may want to add one of the following Medical Subject Headings to your search strategy (combine any of these terms with your search strategy using "AND"):

Analytical, Diagnostic and Therapeutic Techniques and Equipment

Investigative Techniques

Epidemiologic Study Characteristics

• Epidemiologic Studies
• Case-Control Studies
  • Retrospective Studies
• Cohort Studies
  • Longitudinal Studies
    • Follow-Up Studies
    • Prospective Studies
• Cross-Sectional Studies
• Seroepidemiologic Studies
• HIV Seroprevalence
• Clinical Trials
  • Clinical Trials, Phase I
  • Clinical Trials, Phase II
  • Clinical Trials, Phase III
  • Clinical Trials, Phase IV
  • Controlled Clinical Trials
    • Randomized Controlled Trials
  • Multicenter Studies
• Feasibility Studies
• Intervention Studies
• Pilot Projects
• Sampling Studies
• Twin Studies

Epidemiologic Research Design

• Control Groups
• Cross-Over Studies
• Double-Blind Method
• Matched-Pair Analysis
• Meta-Analysis
• Random Allocation
• Reproducibility of Results
• Sample Size
• Sensitivity and Specificity
  • Predictive Value of Tests
  • ROC Curve
• Single-Blind Method

Evaluation Studies

• Clinical Trials
  • Clinical Trials, Phase I
  • Clinical Trials, Phase II
  • Clinical Trials, Phase III
  • Clinical Trials, Phase IV
  • Controlled Clinical Trials
    • Randomized Controlled Trials
  • Multicenter Studies
• Device Approval
• Drug Approval
  • Investigational New Drug Application
• Drug Evaluation
• Drug Evaluation, Preclinical
  • Drug Screening Assays, Antitumor
    • Tumor Stem Cell Assay
    • Xenograft Model Antitumor Assays
      • Subrenal Capsule Assay
  • Microbial Sensitivity Tests
    • Serum Bactericidal Test
    • Parasitic Sensitivity Tests
• Product Surveillance, Postmarketing
  • Adverse Drug Reaction Reporting Systems
  • Clinical Trials, Phase IV
  • Program Evaluation
  • Reproducibility of Results

For additional assistance with finding articles, contact the Health Sciences Library Reference Desk at 816-235-1885 or HSL Email Reference).