Advanced Literature Searching For Health

2.4 Synonyms

Step 3: Think of synonyms

Now that we've broken down our scenario and have decided which concepts to use in our search - our next job is building the search strategy. One of the first things you will learn when doing health research is there could be a dozen different ways to describe the same thing. This can be because: 

• The name of medical concepts can change (e.g. 'depression' was historically referred to as 'melancholia')
• Common language vs medical language (e.g. 'Edema' is also known as 'swelling' in layman's terms)
• Regional terminology (e.g. 'anasthetist' vs. 'anesthesiologist') 
• Regional spelling (e.g.  the American 'celiac disease' vs the English 'coeliac disease')

Choosing just one term for a concept means missing out on results that use different terms. This is why its best practice to include as many synonyms as you can think of, to ensure you capture all possible results. One way of keeping track of all your synonyms is to use tables, like you'll see later in the page.

How to Find Synonyms

There are many ways to find synonyms for your concepts. You could find synonyms:

• In your textbooks, or subject readings
• By searching Google Scholar
• Checking Wikipedia
• From key papers

Only add any synonyms that accurately describe your topic to your table. For example if you are looking specifically at gestational diabetes, it doesn't make sense to just use 'diabetes' as a synonym. This is too general and will bring back articles on different kinds of diabetes that are irrelevant to your search.

TIP: Use a table to keep track of your terms. Make every concept a separate column: this helps you construct your search into a language databases can read.

Example

Let's use the question from the last module and find synonyms for each of the concepts.

A patient with gestational diabetes (GDM) has been recommended glucose-lowering drugs, but wants to know if diet supplements could be just as effective.

By looking at textbooks and subject readings, we can begin to fill out our synonym table.