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U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

MAUDE Database Verity Search HELP

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Super Search Devices@FDA
510(k) | DeNovo | Registration & Listing | Adverse Events | Recalls | PMA | HDE | Classification | Standards
CFR Title 21 | Radiation-Emitting Products | X-Ray Assembler | Medsun Reports | CLIA | TPLC
 

HELP for using the Verity search engine.

Here are some helpful tips to make searching a little easier.

Common Search Operators
Additional Operators
Proximity Operators
Syntax Options (Sounds like)
Help with Keywords


Common Search Operators

AND finds documents containing both words it joins. (e.g., pregnancy AND folate will find all documents containing pregnancy and folate.)

OR finds documents containing either of the words it joins. (e.g., pregnancy OR folate will find documents containing the word pregnancy or the word folate, but not necessarily both.)

NOT finds documents containing the word that precedes it but that do not contain the word(s) that follows it. (e.g., pregnancy NOT folate would find all documents with the word pregnacy, but would exclude any document with the word folate even if the word pregnancy was in the document.) NOTE: NOT can only be used with the AND and OR operators.

, (comma) finds documents containing at least one of the words specified, ranking them using "the more, the better" approach, so documents with the most occurences of the words searched for are given the highest rank.

Additional Operators

? The question mark is a wildcard operator that represents any one character. You can use a ? to specify the first letter of a word. For example, the query ?an would locate documents with the following words, ran, pan, can, and ban.

* The asterisk is a wildcard operator that represents one or more characters. For example, the query corp* would locate corporate, corporation, corporal, and corpulent. However, the asterisk cannot be used to specify the first letter or letters of a word.

' ' Use single quotes to find stemmed variations of a word. For example, the query edit' finds edited, editing, and edition, among others.

"" Use double quotes to find exact matches only. For example, the query "edit" would only find documents with the word edit in them. Especially helpful in finding specific phrases. For example, a search for "Children and Tobacco" would only find documents with the phrase "Children and Tobacco" in just this order.

( ) Use parentheses to group words or phrases together. For example, to select documents that contain both the literal phrase "pharmaceutical companies" and the literal word "stock," you can enter the following: AND ("pharmaceutical companies", "stock").

<MANY> counts the density of words, stemmed variations, or phrases in a document, and produces a relevance-ranked score for retrieved documents. The more occurrences of a word, stem, or phrase proportional to the amount of document text, the higher the score of that document when retrieved. Because the MANY modifier considers density in proportion to document text, a longer document that contains more occurrences of a word may score lower than a shorter document that contains fewer occurrences. NOTE: This modifier cannot be used with AND, OR, or the DATE operators.

Proximity Operators

<NEAR> finds documents containing words that are in the same general area, but may or may not be adjacent. For example, fish <NEAR> bacteria would find all documents that contain the word bacteria within 3-5 words of fish.

<NEAR/N> This operator allows you to search for words within a specified distance from each other. For example, the query, commute <NEAR/10> bicycle, would locate all documents with these two words within 10 words of each other. The N variable can be any integer between 1 and 1,024.

<PHRASE> finds documents containing phrases or words that are adjacent to each other. For example, if you are looking for a phrase "import detention reports" your search could look like this: <PHRASE> Import detention reports and this would retreive all documents with these three words in a row.

Proximity Operators include: <NEAR> and <PHRASE> described above and <SENTENCE> and <PARAGRAPH>. These operators will find documents in which the words specified are in the same sentence or paragraph.

<ORDER> allows you to search for documents that contain the words in the same order they appear in the query. For example, president <ORDER> washington would find documents with president washington not washington president.

<IN> finds documents within a specified zone or field. For example, different fields include date, author, title, summary, or body text. To find the word web or its variations in a title of a document your search should look like this: web <IN> title. To find multiple variations of more than one word in a title use parentheses like this: (web, security) <IN> title. To find web security items in the title and summary use a query like this: (web, security) <IN> (title, summary).

Syntax Options

<SOUNDEX> expands the search to include the word you enter and one or more words that "sound like," or whose letter pattern is similar to the word specified. This is helpful when you are not certain of the exact spelling of a word.

<STEM> expands your search to include the word you enter and all its variations.

<THESAURUS> finds documents with synonyms of the word you specify. For example, the query <THESAURUS> altitude retrieves documents that include "height," "elevation," and "altitude."

Help with Keywords

Most queries can be written by entering the word or phrases you are interested in. To ask for more specific results, you could enter several words or phrases, seperated by commas, that describe the subject more precisely, such as: Devices, 510k.

This query would generate documents that contain the terms "Devices," "510k," or both. Case does not matter in queries. Your results list will display a ranked list of documents, with the most relevant documents at the top. NOTE: Use of parentheses around the k for 510k will not work, parentheses performs another function, and by default is not treated as literal.

If you want to see documents that refer to a series of words that occur in a specific order, such as "ODE Guidance document," you could enter: ode guidance document. This query returns documents that contain all of these words in the exact sequence you specified, including stemmed variations of the search terms.

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