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Introduction to the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH® Vocabulary)

What is MeSH?

  • Acronym for Medical Subject Headings
  • The U.S. National Library of Medicine's controlled vocabulary (thesaurus)
  • Gives uniformity and consistency to the indexing and cataloging of biomedical literature and is a distinctive feature of MEDLINE
  • Similar to keywords on other systems
  • Arranged in a hierarchical manner called the MeSH Tree Structures
  • Updated annually

Who uses MeSH?

  • Searchers of MEDLINE/PubMed, library catalogs, and other databases -- to assist with subject searching
  • National Library of Medicine (NLM) indexers -- to describe subject content of journal articles for MEDLINE
  • Catalogers -- to describe books and audiovisuals in the NLM and other medical library collections (see the Using Medical Subject Headings (MeSH®) in Cataloging online training course)

MeSH Vocabulary includes four types of terms:

  • Headings — over 26,000 headings represent concepts found in the biomedical literature
Examples
  • Body Weight
  • Kidney
  • Dental Cavity Preparation
  • Self Medication
  • Radioactive Waste
  • Brain Edema
  • Subheadings — (also called qualifiers) attached to MeSH headings to describe a specific aspect of a concept
Examples
  • adverse effects
  • diagnosis
  • metabolism
  • therapy

Note: See Subheading Hierarchical Groupings

  • Supplementary Concept Records — over 197,000 terms in a separate thesaurus from the Medical Subject Headings. These are primarily substance terms, but also include some protocols and rare disease terms. These terms are updated weekly.
Examples
  • cordycepin
  • valspodar
  • tacrolimus binding protein 4
  • MOPP protocol
  • Snyder Robinson syndrome
  • Publication Characteristics (Publication Types) — describe the type of publication being indexed; i.e., what the item is, not what the article is about
Examples
  • Letter
  • Review
  • Randomized Controlled Trial