SELECTING THE BEST MEDICAL SUBJECT HEADINGS (MeSH)

Advantages of Searching with MeSH -- Medical Subject Headings:

• All citations on a particular subject are described by the same MeSH, so that you do not have to think of all synonyms or variations of a term and perform multiple searches.

• MeSH searches allows you to 'focus' a subject heading in order to find fewer, more relevant citations on the subject, or to 'explode' a subject heading in order to find a larger, broader set of citations.
• 'Subheadings' can be attached to MeSH terms.

We'll learn more about 'focus', 'explode', and 'subheadings' later. For now, let's review the differences between text word/key word and MeSH searching.

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