University of Texas
Health Science Center		 --> School of Medicine --> Clinical Resources
University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio

ClinDx@lists.UTHSCSA.edu

·Current issue
·Previous issues
·PDA access
·Search all issues
·Subscribe or unsubscribe.
·Technical details

Note:

The last issue is July, 2004. PubMed changed the format of their xml in a way that requires major reprogramming to ClinDx to resume this distributing new issues.

Purpose

Evidenced based articles on clinical diagnosis and the clinical examination can be difficult to find. We have created a service that will help keep you up-to-date on the latest and best evidence on the medical history or physical examination. This information should be useful to both clinicians and clinical educators. To get the information, you simply need to subscribe to the ClinDX listsrv. Once you enroll, our listserv will mail you the current links (from above) to recent articles, every month, on the medical history and clinical examination. You will receive only one email per month. At any time, should this service not be useful to you, you may disenroll and the information will stop. We have created this listserv because we enjoy it. There is no conflict of interest with any funding source, as we have none other than the cyberspace provided us by the University of Texas Health Sciences Center, and the support of the Society of General Internal Medicine through the Clinical Examination Interest Group (David Simel, M.D.,M.H.S. Director). Please provide us feedback about the quality of this information to Badgett@UTHSCSA.edu.

Archives

Search Archives:
Enter one term.
Notes on searching:
  1. Truncation characters, $ or *, are not needed. Just type the root of the words you want to search. You may search for textwords, first author name, or journal abbreviation.
  2. Archives start 1/2000, except for the Rational Clinical Examination Series in JAMA which starts 1992.
Browse Archives

For PDA access

The email you receive each month will contain a link to download one of three versions (Palm doc format, iSilo, or Webclipping) of the listserv for your PDA.

In addiition, back issues are archived:

How to get full texts of journals from OVID?

Type or copy & paste the line labeled "Ovid:" (not including the label) into OVID. This will work for many, but not all journals.

Details

What is our search strategy?

Each month we search the same medical journals covered by JournalWatch (except for MMWR and Science) with the following search strategy was modified from a prior study:

(characteristic*[word - added 5/03] OR feature*[word] or finding*[word] or marker*[word] or predictor*[word] or sign[word] or signs[word] or test[word] or tests[word] or variable*[word]) AND (physical[word] or exam[word] or examination[word] or clinical[word] or bedside[word])
AND
sensitiv*[word] OR probabilit*[word] OR model[word] or physical examination[Mesh]
NOT Cephalometry[mesh] NOT Body Constitution[mesh] NOT Pelvimetry [mesh]

In addition, we search all journals for articles with the following more restrictive strategy:
((((sensitivity[word] OR sensitivities[word]) AND physical examination[mesh]) OR physical examination[major])

We search the month that is four months prior to the current month. As the strategy heavily relies on the MeSH term "Physical exmaination", we can only search months that are covered by MEDLINE. As the backlog of articles waiting to enter MEDLINE varies, we always use the month that is four months prior to the current month.

Lastly, the citations that are retrieved are then screened for meeting criteria. Generally, aboout 10% of citations found with the MEDLINE search are included after manual screening. Articles are selected if their abstracts suggest the articles will report any of the following for at least one finding from the history or physical (other than routine vital signs):

How are the articles summarized?

If the article uses a structured abstract, the the authors' conclusions are used to summarized the article. Otherwise, the last two sentences of the abstract are used.

How are files created for handheld computers?

More technical details


Last update 5/6/2003 3:17PM.