In the New Search box, type a search phrase consisting of one
or more terms.
After you enter three characters, UpToDate displays a
list of possible matches for your entry.
Click on an item from the list of possible matches to search
for results for that item. or
Type all of the characters for your desired search phrase and then
click Go (from the New Search page) or Search
(from most other pages).
On the Search Results page, do either of the following:
Click on the title of a topic to display that topic.
Position the mouse pointer over a topic title to display the
topic outline for that topic, then click on a heading in the outline
to directly access the related section of the topic.
See the following for further information about searching in UpToDate:
The New Search box is your starting point for locating
information in UpToDate. The New Search box appears on the New
Search page (the page displayed when you first access UpToDate)
as well as on most other pages in UpToDate. The following
figure shows the New Search page.
Use the New Search box to specify a search phrase, which can
consist of one or more terms. Possible search terms include — but
are not limited to — names of diseases, symptoms, laboratory
abnormalities, procedures, drugs, and classes of drugs.
The more specific you are about the information that you want to
search for, the more likely it is that the search process will return
the desired results. For example, if you want to find information about
how to treat hypertension in pregnancy, specifying treatment of hypertension in
pregnancy as your search phrase will most likely be more productive than
specifying hypertension.
Some additional facts that you should know about searching in UpToDate
are:
UpToDate generally recognizes common synonyms,
abbreviations, and acronyms. For example, the search term GERD will return results for
gastroesophageal reflux disease.
It is not necessary to capitalize search terms, as
capitalization is not considered in the search processing.
UpToDate automatically searches across all included
specialties.
UpToDate provides fully-referenced and updated
information that addresses specific clinical issues and makes clinical
recommendations. However, UpToDate is not a Medline search.
Therefore, an author's name, journal, or year is not a valid search
term.
When you perform a search, UpToDate displays the results
on the Search Results page, as shown in the following example.
You can click directly on the title of a topic in the Search
Results list to display the topic.
You can also position the mouse pointer over a topic title to
display a preview of the topic outline for that topic. This allows you
to quickly scan the contents of different topics by moving the mouse
pointer over the topic titles. In the following example, the mouse
pointer has been placed over the title of the "Management of
hypertension in pregnancy" topic to display its topic outline at the
right side of the page.
Each heading in the topic outline preview is linked to the
corresponding section of the topic. Thus, you can click on a heading in
the topic outline preview to directly access a specific part of the
topic.
You can prioritize the list of search results by selecting one of
the prioritization options on the Search Results page, as follows:
All search results — Topics are listed
without regard for whether they are adult, pediatric, or patient
information topics. This is the default setting.
Prioritize adult topics — Adult topics
are listed first in the search results.
Prioritize pediatric topics — Pediatric
topics are listed first in the search results.
Prioritize patient topics (UpToDate online
only) — Patient topics are listed first in the search results.
In some cases, UpToDate provides suggestions as alternate or
additional possibilities for your search. The following are some common
situations in which this may occur:
There are multiple meanings for an acronym or abbreviation
that you specified.
There is a misspelling or other typographical error in a
search term.
There are broader categories of information related to a
search term.
The search suggestions appear near the top of the Search Results
page.
For example, suppose that you perform a search using cea as the
search phrase. There are two common meanings for this acronym,
"carcinoembryonic antigen" and "carotid endarterectomy." The Search
Results page displays both of these meanings as search suggestions, as
shown in the following figure.
If "carotid endarterectomy" is the meaning in which you are
interested, you can click on it in the search suggestion area; UpToDate
will then rerun the search using "carotid endarterectomy" as the search
phrase, thereby eliminating any unwanted search results that might have
been returned for "carcinoembryonic antigen."
When you display a topic in UpToDate, the topic outline
for that topic appears at the left side of the page. This makes it easy
to quickly scan the contents of the topic.
You can click on a section heading in the outline to directly
access the corresponding part of the topic, as shown in the following
example.
In addition to the section headings for the topic, the topic
outline also includes links for any associated graphics and related
topics.
To find specific text within a topic, do the following:
Click Find in the topic tools area at
upper-right.
UpToDate displays the Find in Topic dialog box, with
the search phrase from your most recent search entered as the text to
find.
If you want to find different text in the topic, type the text
that you want to find. You can specify one or more words.
Select Find synonyms if you want to find both
exact matches and synonyms for the text that you have specified (for
example, if you have entered "myocardial infarction" and would also
like to find occurrences of "heart attack"), or select Find
exact match if you want to find only exact matches.
Click Find to highlight all occurrences of
the text that you have specified.
To clear highlighted text, click Clear in the
Find in Topic dialog box.
You can display a list of recently-performed searches and
recently-viewed topics from which you can rerun a search or redisplay a
topic. For further information, click here.
UpToDate includes a drug information database that
contains information on drug dosing, interactions, adverse effects, and
other drug-related content.
You can search on a drug name just as you would search for any
other medical term in UpToDate. Searching on a drug name will
return information from both the drug information database and any other
UpToDate topics that contain information related to that drug.
Note: The first time that you open a drug
information topic from the drug information database, a drug information
disclaimer statement appears. Click the Click here to
continue link in the disclaimer to display the drug information topic.
Drug information topics are structured similarly to other topics,
with a topic outline displayed at the left side of the page. You can
click on a heading in the topic outline to go directly to a section of
the topic, and you can click on a linked reference number (either within
the body of the topic or in the References section at the bottom) to
display the Medline abstract for that reference.
User Manual
