WHAT IS MESH?
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MeSH is the National Library of Medicine's controlled vocabulary thesaurus. It consists of sets of terms naming descriptors in a hierarchical structure that permits searching at various levels of specificity. |
WHAT IS A CONTROLLED VOCABULARY THESAURUS?
A controlled vocabulary thesaurus organizes a database into pre-determined subject terms that everything about that subject falls under. You do not have to guess among a host of terms that are similar in meaning to find relevant articles.
| Example: flu | MeSH Subject Term: Influenza, Human |
| Example: allergies | MeSH Subject Term: Hypersensitivity |
| Example: Wheat allergy | MeSH Subject Term: Wheat Hypersensitivity |
| Example: Coronavirus | MeSH Subject Term: COVID-19,or Coronavirus |
| Example: Hayfever | MeSH Subject Term: Rhinitis, Allergic, Seasonal |
| Example: Monkeypox | MeSH Subject Term: Monkeypox |
| Example: RSV | MeSH Subject Term: Respiratory Syncytial Viruses |
WHERE IS MESH USED?
MeSH controlled vocabulary thesaurus is used it PubMed.
MeSH terms impose uniformity and consistency to the indexing of biomedical literature and are applied to citations when they are indexed for MEDLINE. This system offers three main advantages:
Lung cancer, lung tumor, lung neoplasm, and pulmonary cancer are all possible synonyms for the same topic. The MeSH term Lung Neoplasms covers all of the variations, saving you from having to type them all into your search.
If a citation has no abstract or otherwise does not effectively convey the topic(s) discussed in the article, MeSH indexing allows for discovery of this citation even by basic keyword searching.
MeSH Headings, Subheadings and Publication Types are organized in hierarchies, or "MeSH trees".
At the most general level of the hierarchy are very broad headings such as "Anatomy" or "Mental Disorders". More specific headings are found at narrower levels of the hierarchy, such as "Ankle" and "Conduct Disorder". A MeSH term can be part of one or more hierarchies.
