3 Medical Term Search Techniques for Relevant Results

By Ravish Amin

Accessing information from the web is easy – if you know what you’re doing.  Different search techniques produce different results.  Here’s how to vary your search techniques to get all the info you’re looking for.

1. Disease plus “treatment, symptoms “ – Search engines focus on medical terms with relevancy based on phrases. Because of this, searching for the word “angina” will produce different results than searching for “angina treatment” or “angina symptoms.” Here are some useful combinations of medical search terms:

a. Hypertension symptoms

b. Hypertension treatment

c. Hypertension labs

d. Hypertension differential

2. Mix and match terms – Varying your search terms produces different outputs. Get the best results by trying your search several different ways.

a. angina differential diagnosis

b. differential unstable angina (mix order of medical term variations)

c. differential angina pectoris

d. angina differential clinical

e. angina differential stable

3. Sort by content type – Often, clinicians and students focus on medical content available from a specialized source or category. Include these categories with mix and match or disease + search techniques. Try including the following common categories and terms in your searches to access relevant medical content:

a. Research

b. Evidence-based Articles

c. Reviews

d. Practice Guidelines

e. News

f. Patient Education

g. Clinical Trials

h. CME

i. Complementary Medicine