Library: PubMed/MEDLINE: CLINICAL QUERIES

Clincial Queries

PubMed Clinical Queries provides specialized searches for clinicians:

Clinical Studies and Systematic Reviews.
Search by Clinical Study

Clinical Study Categories use a specialized search method with built-in search filters that limit retrieval to citations to articles reporting research conducted with specific methodologies, including those that report applied clinical research.

PubMed Clinical Queries screenshot

Systemataic Reviews

Finding systematic reviews:

In PubMed, Systematic Reviews cover a broad set of articles that build consensus on biomedical topics. This feature is provided to help clinicians locate systematic reviews and similar articles. A list of related sources on this topic is available.

To find Systematic Reviews:

1. Click Clinical Queries from the PubMed homepage

2. Enter your search terms in the search box

3. Click Search

Example
Find Systematic Reviews on inhalation therapy for pneumonia.
Go to the Clinical Queries page
Enter the search terms inhalation therapy pneumonia into the search box, click Search.

Alternatively, enter search terms followed by AND systematic[sb] into the search box. For example, lyme disease AND systematic[sb].

Clinical Studies

To find citations using the Clinical Study Category:

1. Click Clinical Queries from the PubMed homepage.
2. Enter your search terms in the search box
3. Select a Category: Therapy, Diagnosis, Etiology, Prognosis, or Clinical prediction guides
4. Select a Scope: Narrow (specific search) or Broad (sensitive search)
5. Click Search

Example
Find research on diagnosing cystic fibrosis.
Go to the Clinical Queries page
Enter cystic fibrosis in the search box.
Choose “diagnosis” under Category and “narrow” under Scope, click Search.