Subheadings are used with Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) to retrieve frequently discussed aspects of a topic, e.g., drug therapy, diagnosis, economics, psychology, etc.
To search using a MeSH term with a subheading, enter the MeSH subject heading followed by a forward slash and the subheading abbreviation, e.g. health care reform/ec for the economics of health care reform.
To search using multiple subheadings with MeSH terms, use either the subheading screen you see with the OVID Mapping function or direct command searching with the following command syntax:
MeSH Heading/sub1,sub2,sub3,etc. For example, alzheimer's disease/et,ge
Additionally, you can search using certain pre-arranged "Families of Subheadings." See that section below.
Free-Floating Subheadings (Advanced Searching Technique) -- Not all subheading go with a MeSH subject heading, although there may be legitimate uses. To search for articles using the subheading only is possible; but, it should be used with caution and only in combination with other search terms because of the numbers of citations retrieved. The direct command line syntax for this procedure is to use the 2-letter code followed by .fs.
The number in parentheses after the subheading is the date when that subheading began to be used in the MEDLINE database; for example (66) means that that heading is good and usable all the way back to 1966.
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Sometimes several subheadings may be used to express a search concept. The groupings, or families, which follow contain some subheadings one might consider when searching for concepts such as diagnosis, etc. Use all headings appropriate for the search.
Pre-Exploded Subheadings (Advanced Searching Technique) -- Not all subheading go with a MeSH subject heading, although there may be legitimate uses. To search for articles using only these families of subheadings is possible; but, it should be used with caution and only in combination with other search terms because of the numbers of citations retrieved. The direct command line syntax for this procedure is to use the 2-letter code followed by .xs.
|| Adverse Effects || Analysis || Anatomy & Histology || Chemistry || Complications || Cytology || Diagnosis || Embryology || Epidemiology || Etiology || Metabolism || Organization & Administration || Pharmacology || Physiology || Statistics & Numerical Data || Surgery || Therapeutic Use || Therapy || OVID Therapy (1995- different definition) || CDP Toxicity (1995- different definition)