Advanced Search Help

AskaPatient's "Advanced Search Form" can help you quickly find exactly the kinds of
reviews you are looking for.  Here are some examples:

Narrowing the results for drugs with hundreds of ratings:

Sometimes there are large record sets (resulting in 10 or more pages of results) for popular drugs.  Instead of paging through all of the results, try using the "Filter Search" feature or doing an advanced search to zero in  on exactly  the ratings you are interested in for your particular drug ("Drugname").  Drugs might be prescribed for a myriad of reasons, and are even sometimes prescribed "off-label"; you can zero in on just the people who report taking it for a particular reason. You can also see if anyone else experienced similar side effects to yours.

For example, use the Advanced form (or "Filter Search" is even faster if you are just searching for reviews about one drug--the link is near the top of the ratings page) for searches like these:

  1. Find the ratings for "DrugName" for patients in a particular age range, say from age 45-55.

  2. Find the ratings for "Drugname" for people who took it for more than 1 day, or another time frame.

  3. Find the ratings for "Drugname" for women who took it for a particular reason, such as a particular kind of infection
  4. Find the ratings for "Drugname" for people who took it and experienced a particular side effect.

Drugs that contain a particular ingredient

Find the drugs that contain a particular ingredient, such as "ACETAMINOPHEN". (search in the drugname/ingredient field)

Drugs that seemed to work best for a particular reason.

Simply type in the reason. Use variations on the same term, with a comma or space in between the terms, and click the check box "any word"
If you wanted to find reviews that people were taking for BOTH "fever and pain" for instance, type "fever pain" and click the check box "all words".
If you wanted reviews for the condition "Swine flu" (and not just flu) type in "swine flu" and click the check box "exact phrase."

Examples:

--What drugs are women aged 40-50 taking for endometriosis? [search for age range 40-50 female, and "endometriosis" in the 'reason" field.]
--Is it possible that "bad dreams" experienced by my child could be caused by a drug? [search for the words ("any word")  'nightmares dreams' in the side effects field, for ages 0-15, and drug name, if desired.]
--What different drugs are men using in conjunction with treating prostate cancer? [search using the phrase "prostate cancer" in the reason field, and check"male" for patient type.]
--What different drugs are being  used in conjunction with treating breast cancer? [search using the phrase "breast cancer" in the reason field, and check "female".]

Favorable or negative reviews for a particular drug

--Example: Find  the ratings that were at least a "4" for treating strep throat.  [search using phrase " strep throat" in the reason field, and satisfaction - check the boxes for "4" and "5". Keep in mind that a search like this does not show the 'average' rating score for the drug, just the ratings that got high reviews for the drug.

Average ratings for a drug that were taken either more than a minimum number of times/days or more than a particular time frame.

This is a good way to research the possibility of whether side effects tend to show up more often the longer the patient takes the drug, or whether the success rate improves with long term use.

--Example: What were the average ratings for "Drugname" if patient took it only 7 or less days? [search using the time length field.]
What were the average ratings if they took "Drugname" for more than 2 weeks?

Notes to Consider:

  1. The database contains more than 4,500 drugs (New Molecular Entities and generic equivalents) approved by the FDA. Most are prescription drugs, although some over the counter (OTC) and biological drugs are included.
  2. Some drugs may have warnings or market withdrawals that might not be immediately be apparent in the database. That os why it always helps to click on the link at the top of the page to double check the drug's current status at the FDA web site.
  3. For faster results, use the "Filter Search" rather than "Advanced Search" if you just want to search for particular reviews about one drug name. (Click on the "Filter Results" link for the ratings page for that drug.)
  4. A maximum of 75 drugs can be returned for any one advanced search.

  5. If you use the "ANY" designation for age... ANY will include those ratings where the person did not indicate an age.
    So, if you do not want to include any reviews where the person did not indicate an age, type in "0" or "1" for the beginning age range.
  6. Results are shown by drugs with the highest number of matching ratings first.
  7. The average rating for an advanced search is the average rating BASED on your search criteria. That is why if you view the complete rating report for the drug, the average rating will most likely be different than the average rating for your custom search
  8. However, if you run a filter from the search page, the average rating listed on that page (viewrating) is the average rating OVERALL for the drug. So to obtain the average rating based on your particular search criteria, always use the Advanced Search page.
  9. Drug Classification: has auto-fill list or you can also view the entire list of treatment categories.. These categories are broad and are a combination of the AMA Drug Evaluation Subscription classification system (which the FDA no longer uses because it has not been updated in years) , the American Health Pharmacists' classification categories, and other new categories that have been created for new kinds of drugs. However, it is a good starting point for looking at broad categories of drugs. It might still be helpful to use keywords in the "reason" field, as you can find more specific matches that way.
  10. For the Drug name field, type in at least 3 letters, but also put in some other criteria. or use the autofill hints for drug name.
  11. You can search by the brand name or the ingredients in the drug name field.
  12. Because this database has taken 15 years to develop, and the popularity of the web site has increased slowly but steadily over the years, there are fewer ratings from earlier years and more in recent years.
  13. When adding a rating. please put the age of the patient, not your age.

-----Do you still have questions about how to do an advanced search? Contact us: we would like to help!