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

Table 5 Frequency of neuromuscular dysfunction terms in titles, abstracts and four databases

Neuromusculoskeletal Dysfunction Terms Used in Search Strategies	Title 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
Apophyseal
Asymmetry	1	2
Blockage
Fixation / Tissue Fixation [mh] [de]	1	3		4
Hypomobility
Joint Instability [mh] [sh] [de]					1
Low back pain [mh] [sh] [de] / back pain [mh] [sh] [de]	5	8	6	12	4	4
Manipulable lesion
Mobility	1	6			1	2
Motion unit
Muscle tension / Muscle contraction [mh] [sh] [de]		1	2
Myofascial Pain Syndromes [mh] [sh] [de]			2	1		1
Neck pain [mh] [sh] [de]	2	2	2	4	1
Quality of Motion
Range of Motion, Articular [mh] [de]/ Range of motion [sh]	1	5	4	7	2
Stiffness	1	2
Somatic dysfunction [de]	1	3		3		1
Subluxation [sh] [de]		1		9	1
Tender point*	1	1
Tissue texture		2
Trigger points [de]	1	1				1
Zygapophyseal joint [mh] / Zygapophysial	1	1
Authors' Terms ⁵
Dysfunction (cervical, joint, neck, spinal, etc.)	6	6				2
Motion [mh] [sh] [de]		7		3		3
Motion palpation/ Palpation, motion [de]	3	3		9		1
Motion restriction		4
Spinal (cervical) pain	2	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. ⁵These terms were not used in the search strategies but were used by authors in titles and abstracts. * is a truncation symbol for a wild card search in PubMed and Web of Science.

ISSN: 2662-7671