Medical Subject Headings
Overview[edit | edit source]
Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) is a comprehensive controlled vocabulary used for indexing journal articles and books in the life sciences. It serves as a thesaurus that facilitates searching by providing a consistent way to retrieve information that may use different terminology for the same concepts.
History[edit | edit source]
MeSH was first published in 1960 by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) in the United States. It was developed to improve the indexing of articles in the Index Medicus, a comprehensive index of medical scientific journal articles.
Structure[edit | edit source]
MeSH is organized in a hierarchical structure known as a "tree". Each descriptor in MeSH is assigned a unique identifier and is placed in one or more locations in the hierarchy. This allows for searching at various levels of specificity.
Descriptors[edit | edit source]
Descriptors are the main headings in MeSH. They represent concepts and are used to index articles. Each descriptor can have multiple entry terms, which are synonyms or closely related terms.
Qualifiers[edit | edit source]
Qualifiers, also known as subheadings, are used to refine the meaning of a descriptor. They allow for more specific indexing and searching. For example, the descriptor "Diabetes Mellitus" can be combined with the qualifier "therapy" to find articles specifically about the treatment of diabetes.
Supplementary Concept Records[edit | edit source]
Supplementary Concept Records (SCRs) include additional information about substances, diseases, and other concepts that are not included as main headings. These records are often used for chemicals and drugs.
Usage[edit | edit source]
MeSH is used by the NLM to index articles for the MEDLINE/PubMed database. It is also used by other databases and libraries around the world. Researchers and librarians use MeSH to perform precise searches in biomedical literature.
Updates[edit | edit source]
MeSH is updated annually to reflect changes in terminology and the introduction of new concepts. The updates are based on input from the scientific community and changes in the field of medicine.
Related pages[edit | edit source]
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Contributors: Kondreddy Naveen, Prab R. Tumpati, MD
