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Fuzzy Concepts


Sometimes it is very hard to gather all the terms needed to define a concept. If you examine the titles in the list below you will note that all of them discuss the treatment of hay fever. If you look carefully you will note that:

wpeA.jpg (664 bytes) The vocabulary for the condition is represented in the majority of records by the phrases: "hay fever" or "allergic rhinitis".
bullet-bl-bx.gif (843 bytes) The vocabulary for the concept "treatment" is harder to identify. Some titles include the words "treatment" or "immunotherapy", but the majority do not. In some of the titles the context provides the indication that the paper discusses treatment.

Carefully examine this list of titles. Can you think of an easy way to search the treatment concept?

TI: Management of allergic rhinitis with a combination antihistamine/anti-inflammatory agent.
TI: Effects of orally inhaled budesonide in seasonal allergic rhinitis.
TI: Comparative study of terfenadine and cetirizine in hay fever: assessment of efficacy and central nervous system effects.
TI: Cetirizine, loratadine, or placebo in subjects with seasonal allergic rhinitis: effects after controlled ragweed pollen challenge in an environmental exposure unit.
TI: Hay fever: pharmacotherapy or immunotherapy?
TI: Efficacy, pharmacodynamics, and pharmacokinetics of CGP 51901, an anti-immunoglobulin E chimeric monoclonal antibody, in patients with seasonal allergic rhinitis.
TI: Cetirizine treatment of rhinitis in children with pollen allergy: evidence of its antiallergic activity.
TI: Azelastine nasal spray as adjunctive therapy to azelastine tablets in the management of seasonal allergic rhinitis.
TI: Use of an anti-IgE humanized monoclonal antibody in ragweed-induced allergic rhinitis.
TI: Fluticasone propionate aqueous nasal spray compared with oral loratadine in patients with seasonal allergic rhinitis.
TI: Treatment with hot, humid air reduces the nasal response to allergen challenge.
TI: Preseasonal intranasal immunotherapy in birch-alder allergic rhinitis. A double-blind study.
TI: Brompheniramine, terfenadine, and placebo in allergic rhinitis.
TI: Astemizole in combination with pseudoephedrine in the treatment of seasonal allergic rhinitis.
TI: Efficacy and safety of mizolastine in seasonal allergic rhinitis. The Rhinase Study Group.

 

Idea Bean A solution: Subject Indexing

If someone would add certain standard terms for treatment to the records represented by the titles above, searching for information on treatments for hay fever would be much simpler. Fortunately, that's exactly what happens!

In most bibliographic databases people called indexers add standardized subject terms to the descriptor field of each record. Indexers who create Medline records would add one or both of the these two headings to every the record about treating hay fever:

  • Hay Fever - drug therapy
  • Hay Fever - therapy   (used for immunotherapy)

If the searcher remembers to use the subject headings, then he doesn't need to worry about the vocabulary issues associated with "fuzzy concepts."

Unfortunately not every database has added subject terms which are standardized. Of course, web pages aren't assigned standard subject terms!
 
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Author: Richard Jizba, © 2000 Creighton University