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
MeSH Vocabulary includes four types of terms:
- Headings — over 24,000 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 172,000 terms in a separate chemical thesaurus [updated weekly]
Examples: - cordycepin
- valspodar
- tacrolimus binding protein 4
- 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



