Bastyr Center for Natural Health (BCNH) Residents' Resources: CAM in PubMed

Proportionately few CAM studies exist when compared to those for pharmaceutical drug and conventional medicine. One major reason for this is insufficient funding: appropriations for the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) have historically never exceeded half of 1% of the total amount its "parent institution", the National Institutes of Health (NIH), divvies up every year. For 2013, NCCAM's portion is $128 million (0.4%) of the NIH's $31 billion in allocations.

But all is not doom and gloom! Despite challenges, an increasing number of high quality CAM studies are being conducted using approaches that "fit the medicine" and then published in widely-read journals. Finding CAM studies often requires more effort than other areas of medicine, but as you explore the rest of the tutorial, you'll discover techniques that will allow you to become an efficient and effective searcher.

Key Research Databases with CAM Coverage

Access databases via MyBU>Library>Databases, or the Clinical Portal.

Key Medical and CAM Journals

The more focused your topic, the better your search results are likely to be, but what if you aren't sure what lifestyle modification or intervention might be best for your patient? PubMed offers two ways to filter searches for CAM studies. These techniques work best when combined with a health condition; they'll give you an idea of the types of interventions that have been studied in relation to it.

PubMed CAM Filter Method #1 (narrower search, fewer results):

• Add AND Complementary Therapies to your search. This is the MeSH subject heading assigned to the CAM fields.

• Check out the Complementary Therapies MeSH tree (hierarchy)  to see the more specific CAM MeSH terms it includes (scroll to bottom of page).

   Example: atrial fibrillation AND complementary therapies.

NOTE: Using Complementary Therapies doesn't ensure a comprehensive search; become familiar with the concepts it does and doesn't include to help you decide when to use it.

PubMed CAM Filter Method #2 (broader search, more results):

• Add AND cam[sb] to your search. The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) and the National Library of Medicine collaborated on creating the Complementary Medicine subset, which is a far more comprehensive CAM filter than the MeSH term above.
• You can select this filter option from the left sidebar of the PubMed results screen; watch this brief video to see how:
  

• Oh, and hey: If this seems like too much trouble, use this shortcut: adding AND cam[sb] (square brackets) to your search does the same thing as showing and selecting the Complementary Medicine filter. For the Dietary Supplements shortcut, use: AND dietsuppl[sb]. Happy searching!