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Medical Subject Headings
 
 
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Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) is a huge controlled vocabulary
Controlled vocabulary

Controlled vocabularies provide a way to organize knowledge for subsequent retrieval. They are used in subject indexing schemes, subject headings, thesauri and taxonomies....
 for the purpose of indexing
Index (publishing)

An index is a list of words or phrases and associated pointers to where useful material relating to that heading can be found in a document. In a traditional back-of-the-book index the headings will include names of people, places and events, and concepts selected by a person as being relevant and of interest to a possible reader of the boo...
 journal articles and books in the life sciences; it can also serve as a thesaurus
Thesaurus

A thesaurus is a work that contains synonyms and sometimes antonyms, in contrast to a dictionary, which contains definitions and pronunciations....
 that facilitates searching. Created and updated by the United States National Library of Medicine
United States National Library of Medicine

The United States National Library of Medicine , operated by the United States federal government, is the world's largest medical library. The collections of the National Library of Medicine include more than seven million books, journals, technical reports, manuscripts, microfilms, photographs, and images on medicine and related science...
 (NLM), it is used by the MEDLINE
MEDLINE

MEDLINE is a literature Bibliographic database of life sciences and biomedical information. It includes medicine, nursing, pharmacy, dentistry, veterinary medicine, and health care....
/PubMed
PubMed

PubMed is a free search engine for accessing the MEDLINE bibliographic database of citations, abstracts and some full text articles on life sciences and biomedical topics....
 article database and by NLM's catalog of book holdings.

MeSH can be browsed and downloaded free of charge on the Internet. The yearly printed version was discontinued in 2007. Originally in English, MeSH has been translated into numerous other languages and allows retrieval of documents from different languages.

2008 version of MeSH contains a total of 24,767 subject headings, also known as descriptors.






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Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) is a huge controlled vocabulary
Controlled vocabulary

Controlled vocabularies provide a way to organize knowledge for subsequent retrieval. They are used in subject indexing schemes, subject headings, thesauri and taxonomies....
 for the purpose of indexing
Index (publishing)

An index is a list of words or phrases and associated pointers to where useful material relating to that heading can be found in a document. In a traditional back-of-the-book index the headings will include names of people, places and events, and concepts selected by a person as being relevant and of interest to a possible reader of the boo...
 journal articles and books in the life sciences; it can also serve as a thesaurus
Thesaurus

A thesaurus is a work that contains synonyms and sometimes antonyms, in contrast to a dictionary, which contains definitions and pronunciations....
 that facilitates searching. Created and updated by the United States National Library of Medicine
United States National Library of Medicine

The United States National Library of Medicine , operated by the United States federal government, is the world's largest medical library. The collections of the National Library of Medicine include more than seven million books, journals, technical reports, manuscripts, microfilms, photographs, and images on medicine and related science...
 (NLM), it is used by the MEDLINE
MEDLINE

MEDLINE is a literature Bibliographic database of life sciences and biomedical information. It includes medicine, nursing, pharmacy, dentistry, veterinary medicine, and health care....
/PubMed
PubMed

PubMed is a free search engine for accessing the MEDLINE bibliographic database of citations, abstracts and some full text articles on life sciences and biomedical topics....
 article database and by NLM's catalog of book holdings.

MeSH can be browsed and downloaded free of charge on the Internet. The yearly printed version was discontinued in 2007. Originally in English, MeSH has been translated into numerous other languages and allows retrieval of documents from different languages.

Structure of MeSH

Mesh Example
The 2008 version of MeSH contains a total of 24,767 subject headings, also known as descriptors. Most of these are accompanied by a short description or definition, links to related descriptors, and a list of synonyms or very similar terms (known as entry terms). Because of these synonym lists, MeSH can also be viewed as a thesaurus
Thesaurus

A thesaurus is a work that contains synonyms and sometimes antonyms, in contrast to a dictionary, which contains definitions and pronunciations....
.

Descriptor hierarchy

The descriptors or subject headings are arranged in a hierarchy
Hierarchy

A 'hierarchy' is an arrangement of items The word derives from the Greek language , from ?e?????? , "president of sacred rites, high-priest" and that from , "sacred" + , "to lead, to rule"....
. A given descriptor may appear at several places in the hierarchical tree. The tree locations carry systematic labels known as tree numbers, and consequently one descriptor can carry several tree numbers. For example, following the graphic at the right, C stands for Diseases, C06 for Digestive System Diseases and C06.301 for Digestive System Neoplasms; C04 for Neoplasms, C04.588 for Neoplasms By Site, and C04.588.274 is a second tree number for Digestive System Neoplasms. As seen from the graphic, Stomach Neoplasms appears in four locations in the hierarchy and therefore carries four different tree numbers. The tree numbers of a given descriptor are subject to change as MeSH is updated. Every descriptor also carries a unique alphanumerical ID that will not change.

Descriptions

Most entries come with a short description or definition. See the as an example. The explanatory text is written by the MeSH team based on their standard sources if not otherwise stated. References are mostly encyclopaedias and standard textbooks of the subject areas. References for specific statements in the descriptions are not given, instead readers are referred to the .

Qualifiers

In addition to the descriptor hierarchy, MeSH contains a small number of standard qualifiers (also known as subheadings), which can be added to descriptors to narrow down the topic. For example, "Measles" is a descriptor and "epidemiology" is a qualifier; "Measles/epidemiology" describes the subheading of epidemiological articles about Measles. The "epidemiology" qualifier can be added to all other disease descriptors. Not all descriptor/qualifier combinations are allowed since some of them may be meaningless. In all there are 83 different qualifiers.

Supplements

In addition to the descriptors, MeSH also contains some 139,000 Supplementary Concept Records. These do not belong to the controlled vocabulary as such and are not used for indexing MEDLINE articles; instead they enlarge the thesaurus and contain links to the closest fitting descriptor to be used in a MEDLINE search. Many of these records describe chemical substances.

Use in Medline/PubMed

In MEDLINE/PubMed, every journal article is indexed with some 10-15 headings or subheadings, with one or two of them designated as major and marked with an asterisk. When performing a MEDLINE search via PubMed, entry terms are automatically translated into the corresponding descriptors (see Details tab in PubMed). Furthermore, by default a search will include all the descriptors that are located below the given one in the hierarchy.

Top level categories

The top level categories in the MeSH descriptor hierarchy are:
  • Anatomy
    Anatomy

    Anatomy is a branch of biology that is the consideration of the body plan. It is a general term that includes human anatomy, animal anatomy and plant anatomy ....
     [A]
  • Organism
    Organism

    In biology, an organism is any life thing . In at least some form, all organisms are capable of response to stimulus , reproduction, growth and developmental biology, and maintenance of homeostasis as a stable whole....
    s [B]
  • Diseases [C]
  • Chemicals
    Chemical substance

    A chemical substance is a material with a specific Empirical formula. It is a concept that became firmly established in the late eighteenth century after work by the chemist Joseph Proust on the composition of some pure chemical compounds such as basic copper carbonate....
     and Drugs [D]
  • Analytical, Diagnostic and Therapeutic Techniques and Equipment [E]
  • Psychiatry
    Psychiatry

    Psychiatry is a Medicine Specialty devoted to the Treatment of mental disorders, Biomedical research and Prevention of mental disorder. The term was first coined by the German physician Johann Christian Reil in 1808....
     and Psychology
    Psychology

    Psychology is an academic and applied science discipline involving the science study of human mental functions and behavior. Occasionally it also relies on symbolic hermeneutics and critical theory, although these traditions are less pronounced than in other social sciences such as sociology....
     [F]
  • Biological Sciences [G]
  • Physical Sciences [H]
  • Anthropology
    Anthropology

    Anthropology is the study of humans and humanity in its totality. Anthropology has origins in the natural sciences, and the humanities. In Great Britain it was originally divided into physical anthropology and cultural anthropology, which itself was divided into archaeology, technology, ethnology and sociology ....
    , Education
    Education

    File:Inukshuk Monterrey 1.jpgEducation can be seen as a product or a process and considered in a broad sense or a technical sense. According to philosophy of education George F....
    , Sociology
    Sociology

    Sociology is a branch of the social sciences that uses systematic methods of Empiricism and critical theory to develop and refine a body of knowledge about human social structure and activity, sometimes with the goal of applying such knowledge to the pursuit of social welfare....
     and Social Phenomena [I]
  • Technology and Food
    Food

    Food is any substance, usually composed of carbohydrates, fats, proteins and water, that can be Eating or Drinking by an animal or human for nutrition or pleasure....
     and Beverages [J]
  • Humanities
    Humanities

    The humanities are academic disciplines which study the human condition, using methods that are primarily analytic, critical, or speculative, as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of the natural science and social sciences....
     [K]
  • Information Science
    Information science

    Information science is an interdisciplinarity science primarily concerned with the collection, Categorization, manipulation, storage, information retrieval and dissemination of information....
     [L]
  • Persons [M]
  • Health Care
    Health care

    File:Ear surgery on a patient.jpgFile:Monoclonal antibodies3.jpgHealth care, or healthcare, refers to the treatment and management of illness, and the preservation of health through services offered by the Medicine, pharmaceutical, Dentistry, clinical laboratory sciences , nursing, and allied health professions....
     [N]
  • Publication
    Publication

    To publish is to make Content publicly knowledge. The term is most frequently applied to the distribution of text or images on paper, or to the placing of content on a website....
     Characteristics [V]
  • Geographic Locations [Z]


The full hierarchy can be found at Wikipedia:MeSH

See also

  • Medical literature retrieval
    Medical literature retrieval

    Medical literature retrieval or medical document retrieval is an activity that using professional methods for medical research papers retrieval, report and other data to improve medicine research and practice....
  • Medical classification
    Medical classification

    Medical classification, or medical coding, is the process of transforming descriptions of medical diagnosis and medical procedure into universal medical code numbers....
  • Controlled vocabulary
    Controlled vocabulary

    Controlled vocabularies provide a way to organize knowledge for subsequent retrieval. They are used in subject indexing schemes, subject headings, thesauri and taxonomies....
  • GoPubMed
    GoPubMed

    GoPubMed is a knowledge-based search engine for biomedical texts. TheGene Ontology and Medical Subject Headings serve as "Table of contents" in order to structure the millions of articles of the MEDLINE database....
    , searching Medline with MeSH as "table of content"


External links

  • provided by National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health (U.S.)
  • Browsing MeSH:
    • mapping drug-disease relationships in research