Occurrence of Disease and Syndrome Eponyms in the Titles of Medical Literature

No quantitative data on the use of eponyms in medicine are available. This paper attempts to quantify the frequency of occurrence of 91 personalized disease and syndrome eponyms (DSE) in the titles of medical documents. By employing the subject heading-title word correlation technique of Montgomeryand Swansonit was found that 72.2 percent of the 2,435 papers listed in the 1973 Index Medicushad at least one of these 91 candidate DSEs in their titles; another 195 (8.0 percent) titles had the corresponding descriptive or non-eponymic synonyms, and the remaining 480 (19.8 percent) titles did not have either of these two matching elements. Thus, the ratio of occurrence of the personalized DSEs to their descriptive names in the titles of the medical literature examined appeared to be 9:1. It was further noted that, while about 80 percent of the pertinent literature could be retrieved on the basis of a title search with DSEs and their descriptive synonyms, about 20 percent of the relevant documents will be missed.

Bisher gibt es keine quantitativen Angaben über den Gebrauch von Eponymen in der Medizin. Vorliegende Arbeit versucht, die Vorkommenshäufigkeit von 91 mit Eigennamen versehenen Krankheiten und Syndromen (DSE) in den Titeln medizinischer Dokumente zu bestimmen. Bei Verwendung der Subject Heading-Titelwort-Korrelationstechnik von Montgomeryund Swansonzeigte sich, daß72,2% der 2.435 im Index Medicus von 1973 aufgeführten Arbeiten wenigstens einen der 91 DSE-Begriffe enthielten; weitere 195 (8,0%) Titel enthielten entsprechende deskriptive (nicht-eponyme) Synonyme. Die restlichen 480 (19,8%) Titel enthielten keine dieser beiden Begriffsarten. Die personalisierten DSE-Begriffe kommen in den Titeln des medizinischen Schrifttums also etwa neunmal so häufig vor wie die entsprechenden deskriptiven Bezeichnungen. Unter Verwendimg der Eponyme bzw. deren deskriptiver Entsprechungen wird man bei einer Durchsuchung der Titel rund 80% der relevanten Literatur erfassen; rund 20% einschlägiger Dokumente werden dabei verfehlt.

Schlüsselwörter

Medizinische Eponyme - Stichwort-Recherchen - Dokumenten-Auswahl - Information Retrieval

Keywords

Medical Eponyms - Title Word Searching - Document Selection - Information Retrieval

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