Use the fewest, most essential keywords in your searches.
Suppose you were searching for articles on this topic:
- What gene therapies are available for treating congenital hearing loss?
Don't search using lots of unnecessary words: 
Instead, use the fewest, most essential keywords:
Experiment with synonyms.
Question: Would a search on congenital hearing loss drug therapies find these articles?
- Gene Therapies for Hereditary Deafness
- Genetic Treatments for the Prevention of Inherited Hearing Loss
- CRISPR/Cas9: Targeted Genome Editing for the Treatment of Hereditary Hearing Loss
Answer: Probably not. So, expand your search to include synonyms.
| congenital | hearing loss | gene therapies |
| genetic | deaf | "gene therapy" |
| genes | deafness | "gene therapies" |
| hereditary | "hearing impairment" | (gene* OR genom*) AND (treatment or therap* OR edit*) |
| heritable | "hearing impaired" | etc. |
| inherited | etc. | |
| etc. |
Example Search in Web of Science:
congenital OR genetic OR genetics OR hereditary OR heritable OR inherited OR gene
AND
"hearing loss" OR deafness OR deaf OR "hearing impairment" OR "hearing impaired"
AND
"gene therapy" OR "gene therapies"
Example Search in PubMed:
(congenital OR genetic OR genetics OR hereditary OR heritable OR inherited OR gene) AND ("hearing loss" OR deafness OR deaf OR "hearing impairment" OR "hearing impaired") AND ("gene therapy" OR "gene therapies")
Use database features like filters, sorting, etc.
