Medical Subject Headings facts for kids
Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) is like a special dictionary or a super-organized list of words used in science and medicine. It helps people find information in books and articles about health and biology. Think of it as a helpful tool that makes searching for medical topics much easier.
The United States National Library of Medicine (NLM) created and updates MeSH. This system is used by big online libraries of medical papers, like MEDLINE and PubMed, and also by the NLM's own catalog of books.
What is MeSH?
MeSH helps organize a huge amount of medical information. It gives specific tags or keywords to different topics in health and science. For example, instead of just searching for "heart problems," MeSH might have a specific term like "Myocardial Infarction" for a heart attack. This makes sure everyone uses the same words for the same ideas.
How MeSH Helps You Find Information
MeSH works like a smart thesaurus for medical terms. If you search for a topic, MeSH can suggest other related words or more specific terms. This helps you find all the relevant articles, even if they use slightly different words for the same thing. It makes sure you don't miss important research papers.
The History of MeSH
MeSH was first introduced in 1963. For many years, it was printed in big books. However, the printed version stopped in 2007. Now, MeSH is only available online. You can browse it and download it for free through PubMed. Even though it started in English, MeSH has been translated into many other languages. This means people around the world can use it to find medical documents in different languages.
