Diseases, Disorders, Conditions, & Syndromes

For a general orientation to many diseases and disorders, often written in language that is accessible to consumers, start with MedlinePlus. MedlinePlus will link you to information from many authoritative sources, like the National Cancer Instritute or the American Heart Association. Its many features include an online medical dictionary, an illustrated encyclopedia, and drug information.

Do your serious research in books first. You may want to go directly to journal articles, but journal articles are written for people who have read the books and understand them. Here are some good titles:
Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine - in the Reference collection, RC 46 .H333 2001
Current Medical Diagnosis and Treatment - in the Reference collection, RC 71 .A14 2004
Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy - in the Reference collection, RC 55 .M4 1999

StatRef! is an online database for medical textbooks. It contains Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine, the "Current Diagnosis" series and many other useful titles. Access it through the library's Article Databases pages.

Library catalog
To find additional books, do your keyword search. Try to identify a subject label for your topic, then use it, e.g., a search on "emphysema" yields 13 results that indicate the subject term "lungs - diseases, obstructive." Doing a subject search on "lungs diseases obstructive" then yields 23 results.
You can:
1- limit to NHC Library for reference and circulating print books, or
2 - limit to electronic books

NetLibrary
Use netLibrary if you like e-books or if you're off-campus. There are three means of access:
1. go through the library catalog (as above)
2. go through the Article Databases page
3. create your account and go directly to netLibrary (http://www.netlibrary.com/)

Online periodicals databases for journal articles are accessed through the Article Databases page:

CINAHL Plus with Full Text (Cumulative Index to the Nursing and Allied Health Literature). Limit your retrieval to full-text journals. String together your concepts with the connector "and" like this: crohn disease and prognosis.

Health Source: Nursing/Academic Edition Limit your retrieval to full-text and scholarly peer-reviewed journals. String together your concepts with "and" like: breast cancer and treatment.

Health Reference Center-Academic. Limit your retrieval to articles with text and to refereed publications. Use the Narrow by Subdivision feature to see an organized retrieval. Consider a subdivision like Physiological Effects, or Case Studies.

Additional articles can be found in
ProQuest and in Academic Search Complete.

ProQuest offers a Topic Guide tab where you can ask for "anatomy" and automatically limit your retrieval to anatomy & physiology articles. At the bottom of your initial results page you can add the disease, disorder, condition, or body part of your choice to the search statement (to "anatomy & physiology" you add and aneurysm). Use the checkboxes to limit your retrieval to full-text and scholarly articles.

If you need in-depth information from scholarly journals, consider PubMed Central from the National Library of Medicine. This subset of PubMed provides full-text articles online. Be careful about publication dates! Results will not display in newest-to-oldest order. Use the LIMITS link to restrict your results to the most recent 2 or 3 or 5 years (whatever period is desired).

IF you need in-depth information about genetic syndromes, go to the OMIM (Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man) database and search by syndrome name. This database is intended for use by physicians, researchers, and advanced students; prepare yourself before using it by reviewing all other available information..

MedlinePlus, a service of the National Library of Medicine, will provide data from many authoritative websites, including the various National Institutes of Health (NIH) sites, the American Cancer Society, and others. The Encyclopedia at MedlinePlus contains images that can help you illustrate your project, if you wish.
Check the NIH site particular to your topic, for example:
diabetes = NIDDK
COPD = NHLBI
cancer = NCI
infectious diseases = CDC

Some scholarly articles can also be found on WebMD.

Your paper must be written and documented using APA (American Psychological Association) style. The library has a guide for Citation Help which offers a sample paper and basic instructions for creating your References list. Scroll past the MLA links to find the APA information.

If you need additional help, please feel free to contact a librarian during open hours.

Or call us at: 281-618-5707. Our email is nhc.libweb@LoneStar.edu