Embase Searching – A Basic Tutorial

In this tutorial, we’ll describe the steps to do a simple search on heart attack and aspirin.

The default Quick Search page is the first page you see when you get into Embase. In the search box, type a search term SLOWLY, so it will be mapped to the best Emtree term.

When you begin typing, mapping choices appear below the search box. Searching for heart attack, after typing heart at, we see the appropriate mapping term: heart attack use heart infarction. Move the cursor to that term…

Move the cursor down to choose the term and click it when it’s highlighted in blue to do the search for it.

Notice that the term that appears here in the search box is the term we searched – ‘heart attack’ instead of the mapped term ‘heart infarction’.

Click the blue Search button to search....

This brings us to the Results Page. Note that in addition to searching the text-word term, Embase also maps to the Emtree explosion category - ‘heart attack’/exp - which includes many more terms than the simple text- word search.

We want to combine the search we’ve done on heart attack with a search on aspirin. To assure good Emtree mapping, we return to the Quick Search screen…

To go the the Quick Search screen, click the EMBASE logo in the top left corner…

Again, typing our search term slowly to see Emtree mapping options, when we type aspir, we see the correct mapping term:aspirin use: acetylsalicylic acid … Move the cursor down to choose that…

Again, notice that the term in the search box is the term we searched – ‘aspirin’ instead of the mapped term ‘acetylsalicylic acid’.

Click the blue Search button to search....

At the Results screen, we see the 2 searches we’ve done. We want to combine these, to find articles on both subjects together. To do this, we click in the boxes next to #1 and #2

#2 ‘aspirin’/exp OR ‘aspirin’ 172,066#1 ‘heart attack’/exp OR ‘heart attack’ 286,116

And with the boxes checked…Click Combine, with “And” chosen…

#2 ‘aspirin’/exp OR ‘aspirin’ 172,066#1 ‘heart attack’/exp OR ‘heart attack’ 286,116

#3 #1 AND #2 29,723#2 ‘aspirin’/exp OR ‘aspirin’ 172,066#1 ‘heart attack’/exp OR ‘heart attack’ 286,116

And we get our result, combining Heart Attack AND Aspirin…

For more information on using Embase, see our Hardin Library blog post: Embase: Tips For Navigating A Powerful & Tricky Resource