An insight on searching medical literature with basics of Pubmed

In simplest way ‘Literature Search' (LS) is controlled search for all the literature published on a topic. The literal meaning of literature is from its Latin root literatura/litteratura (derived itself from littera: letter or handwriting) which was used to refer to all written accounts, though contemporary definitions extend the term to include texts that are spoken or sung.1 It is defined as ‘a systematic and explicit approach to the identification, retrieval, and bibliographic management of independent studies (usually drawn from published sources) for the purpose of locating information on a topic, synthesizing conclusions, identifying areas for future study, and developing guidelines for clinical practice'.2 The search for relevant study material can be from books, Journals, souvenirs or from proceedings of conferences etc. In modern epoch computer database/internet is the most common single source which is helping us in ‘Literature Search