Finding the Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) term for your search topic can often help you retrieve more relevant results and help ensure that you don’t miss articles.
MeSH is the National Library of Medicine (NLM) controlled vocabulary thesaurus which is updated annually. NLM uses the MeSH thesaurus to index articles from thousands of biomedical journals for the MEDLINE/PubMed database.
Every year, NLM reviews the MeSH thesaurus and considers changes in terminology. New concepts are constantly emerging while old concepts are in a state of flux, and NLM adjusts MeSH terminology and usage accordingly.
This year 113 MeSH headings were either changed or deleted and replaced with more up-to-date terminology. 471 new MeSH Headings were added to MeSH in 2018.
One major change is to the MeSH vocabulary for smoking and smoking-related terms. These have been updated and expanded for 2018.
Several smoking-related terms are now new MeSH terms. These are:
* Tobacco Smoking
* Cigar Smoking
* Cigarette Smoking
* Smoking, Non-Tobacco Products
* Smoking Reduction
Other new smoking-related MeSH headings to note are Smokers, Smoking Devices, and Smoking Prevention.
Remember that the new MeSH won’t have a lot of articles tagged with them just yet, and most are not retroactive.
The NLM has an online article that you can read if you’d like to learn more about changes in MeSH. It includes a link to the entire list of new terms.
Want a quick MeSH refresher? We have a MeSH Tri-Fold available for you. Or call us with your questions at 510-642-2510.