Federiuk C S
Department of Emergency Medicine, Oregon Health Sciences University, Portland 97201, USA.
Acad Emerg Med. 1999 Apr;6(4):292-6. doi: 10.1111/j.1553-2712.1999.tb00392.x.
To determine the effect of the use of abbreviations and acronyms on citation retrieval in MEDLINE searches.
Twenty common medical abbreviations that retrieved a minimum of 400 citations each in MEDLINE text word searches were studied. Each abbreviation was entered in a MEDLINE subject search to determine whether it mapped to an appropriate medical subject heading (MeSH) term. The MeSH category and the number of citations retrieved were recorded. The abbreviation and its definition were each entered in separate text word searches, and the number of citations retrieved was recorded. Sets were combined to determine the number of identical and unique citations retrieved in the searches.
MEDLINE recognized all 20 abbreviations and mapped them to appropriate MeSH headings. MeSH term assignment, however, may be case- and space-sensitive. MeSH term searches retrieved more citations than text word searches for 18 of 20 abbreviations. Comparison of the document sets yielded by each search method revealed a subset of citations common to each. Although all sets retrieved showed overlap, no two were identical. In addition, each citation set contained a proportion of unique documents.
Retrieval of all unique citations required three searches; subject with abbreviation, text word with abbreviation, and text word with definition. These results have important implications for MEDLINE users.
确定使用缩写词和首字母缩略词对医学文献数据库（MEDLINE）检索中引文检索的影响。
研究了20个常见医学缩写词，每个缩写词在MEDLINE文本词检索中至少检索到400条引文。每个缩写词都输入到MEDLINE主题检索中，以确定它是否映射到适当的医学主题词（MeSH）术语。记录MeSH类别和检索到的引文数量。缩写词及其定义分别输入到单独的文本词检索中，并记录检索到的引文数量。合并数据集以确定检索中相同和独特引文的数量。
MEDLINE识别了所有20个缩写词，并将它们映射到适当的MeSH标题。然而，MeSH术语分配可能对大小写和空格敏感。对于20个缩写词中的18个，MeSH术语检索比文本词检索检索到更多的引文。对每种检索方法产生的文档集进行比较，发现每个文档集都有一个共同的引文子集。虽然所有检索到的集都有重叠，但没有两个是相同的。此外，每个引文集都包含一定比例的独特文档。
检索所有独特的引文需要进行三次检索：带缩写词的主题检索、带缩写词的文本词检索和带定义的文本词检索。这些结果对MEDLINE用户具有重要意义。
