Embase Online Help

Browse by Facet displays the top fifteen levels (facets) of the Emtree subject hierarchy.  Each facet represents a broad category of subjects (anatomy, organisms, drugs/chemicals, diseases, medical techniques and equipment, patient groups, etc.),

Because Emtree subject terms are grouped conceptually in hierarchical "trees", you can look at any level of a tree to see broader or narrower (more specific) subjects.  This is very helpful for understanding how subjects relate to one another.  It also shows what terms are retrieved when an explosion search is done.

Record counts are given at each tree level to indicate the number of documents currently indexed in Embase to each specific term.

To browse the trees, simply click on any facet; lower levels, or branches, appear with narrower terms.  Continue clicking on subsequent levels to browse as deeply within the tree as you wish.

Here, you can navigate from Physical diseases, disorders and abnormalities all the way down through brain injury and its lower levels.

This display shows that an explosion search of brain injury retrieves all the sub-terms appearing under it:  brain concussion, cerebellum injury, shaken baby syndrome, etc.  

(-) and (+) show where tree levels can be collapsed or expanded. Here, clicking the (-) at brain injury will supress the display of narrower terms.

Some terms have more than one logical context within Emtree; in this case, a tree for each context will be shown.  For example, brain injury appears in Emtree not only under nervous system injury, but also within the trees for head injury and brain disease.  In each case, its narrower terms remain identical to ensure consistency within the thesaurus.