Capítulo 2: La búsqueda bibliográfica y su aplicación en PubMed-MEDLINE

A bibliographic search may provide the health care professional with the information necessary to up-date knowledge, publication of a work or presentation of the research project. The new technologies and development of databases have made unlimited possibilities to locate and recover this relevant information available. A good bioliographic search should comply with three requirements: clearly identify the question, appropriately search in the adequate resources and adequately formulate the question according to the database. For this, the search strategy must be correctly developed; one must know how to use the Boolean operators and know how different it is to make a search in free language or in controlled language. In order to make a bibliographic search in PubMed-MEDLINE -the most extensive, international and up-dated database in sciences of health - one must know how to handle the MesH (Medical Subjects Headings) terms. This makes it possible to perform a search with greater accuracy and efficacy. In this work, the principles of a bibliographic search, the steps that must be followed for the design and development of the phases of a strategy of bibliographic search, and the main functionalities of MEDLINE needed for any biomedical professional to initiate and develop a bibliographic search with certain efficacy are briefly explained.