PubMed

Sometimes a good way to refine your search results is to limit results to those where the keywords show up in the title or abstract. There are two ways to do this - using the Advanced Search features, or adding      [tiab]    behind each search term.

Advanced Search

Click on 'Advanced' under the main search box. 

Type (or paste) your search terms into the search box, and select "Title/Abstract" from the drop-down box.

This puts the search terms in the Query Box, with the field code limiter of [Title/Abstract] added.  Click 'Search.' 

Using  [tiab] 

Sometimes it's easier to bypass the Advanced Search methods, and simply put      [tiab]       after each keyword.  Using the example above, you'd simply search on       "high blood pressure"[tiab] OR hypertension[tiab]          Both searches return the same set of results.

Note to advanced searchers:  it is ok to use the asterisk for truncation when using [tiab] or [Title/Abstract].  It is not best to use the asterisk when you are not limiting it to [tiab], as doing so turns off automatic term mapping (where PubMed automatically uses related MeSH terms and the keyword's plural, etc).  When you are using [tiab] automatic term mapping is turned off anyway, so using the * will return more results.

Using MeSH terms

It is important to note that you can't use this limiter with MeSH terms.  As MeSH terms are already deemed to be an important concept in the article, using the title/abstract refinement would be redundant and PubMed does not allow this. You have to search separately on the MeSH term, and the keywords in title/abstract field codes, then combine the searches using OR.