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Finding Medical Literature with the AI Assistant

Dotan Asselmann

Search the Literature from Any Chat

The AI Assistant can search PubMed for medical literature directly inside any conversation — you do not need to open a separate tool or leave the chat. Ask a question about a technique, an anatomical variant, or an outcome, and the assistant finds relevant studies and cites them in its answer.

This works in the same chat where you analyze your cases and explore your surgical data, so you can move from "What happened in this case?" to "What does the literature say about it?" without switching context.

How to Access It

  1. Open the AI Assistant from the left sidebar, or go to app.theator.io/ai-assistant.
  2. Type a question that asks for literature, research, or studies — for example, "Find literature on…".
  3. The assistant searches PubMed, then replies with the studies it found and links to each one.

What to Ask

Do not include patient names, MRNs, case IDs, or any other patient-identifying information in your search. Use general clinical terms — procedure names, anatomical structures, and outcomes — because the query is sent to PubMed and logged by the application.

Phrase your request the way you would ask a colleague. These prompts all trigger a literature search:

  • "Find literature on posterior-first dissection technique in laparoscopic cholecystectomy."
  • "Show me recent papers on sleeve gastrectomy leak rates."
  • "What does the literature say about aberrant right hepatic artery variants in cholecystectomy?"
  • "Find studies comparing clip versus stapler for the appendiceal stump."

To narrow the results, combine terms the way you would in a search box: use AND to require both terms and OR to allow either — for example, "Find literature on complete mesocolic excision AND central vascular ligation."

What You Get Back

For each result, the assistant returns:

  • The inline citation — first author, year, and a direct PubMed link, formatted as [Author et al., Year](link).
  • The PMID — the article's PubMed identifier.
  • Additional metadata such as journal name and publication date.

The assistant cites the studies inline in its answer, so you can see exactly which paper supports each point. Click any citation link to open the full record on PubMed.

Tips for Better Results

  • Be specific. Include the procedure, the anatomy, and the outcome you care about. "Papers on bile duct injury during laparoscopic cholecystectomy" returns more focused results than "papers on cholecystectomy."
  • Combine concepts. Use AND / OR to require or broaden terms, and describe the population or comparison you have in mind.
  • Ask follow-up questions. The assistant keeps context within a conversation, so you can ask it to narrow the search, focus on recent years, or summarize what it found without repeating yourself.

AI Assistant vs. the Research Hub

Use the AI Assistant for quick literature lookups in the flow of a conversation — checking the evidence behind a technique or finding a few papers on a topic.

For a full research project — building a cohort from your case library, gathering references and materials, and drafting a manuscript — use the Research Hub, Theator's dedicated research workspace. It keeps your references, files, and figures together across a study. The Research Hub is available to administrators; if you don't see it in your sidebar, contact your Customer Success Manager to confirm your access. See Using the Research Hub for the full workflow.

What's Next?

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