Literature Review – How To Filter Out Redundant Search Results From Similar Search Iterations?

Hey all, I’ve got sort of an unusual research question. Basically, I’d like to perform a comprehensive review of all the literature of a particular topic. To do this, I’d like to use combinations of search terms. For example, I’d conduct a search using terms “A” and “B”, then I’d conduct another search using terms “A” and “C”, then again using “A” and “D”, etc. The problem with this is that there’s a decent amount of overlap of search results among these different combinations and there are thousands of search results for each combination so I want to minimize redundancy as much as possible in order to save time. Is there a way for me to conduct an initial search (e.g., A + B) and then conduct each subsequent search (A + C, A + D, etc.) that will only show search results that are NOT included in the initial A + B search?

I’m using OVID Medline as the search database, but I’d be open to any general workaround solutions as well. From my limited knowledge on a possible solution, I was wondering if it’s possible to export all the search results, copy them as a list into a column within Excel, and then use the Excel function that can highlight duplicate values. This method would allow me to avoid redundant search results from each search iteration. This isn’t an elegant solution imo, but I imagined a possible solution like this. The most ideal solution would be for the database to filter out redundant search results for me automatically.

I can explain or clarify the problem further if that’s helpful. Thank you for any help or suggestions with this problem!!