Medical subject headings (MeSH): focus
2004 version 2
24 May 2004
Restrict to focus
Indexers mark MeSH terms if the subject described is the focus of the article being indexed. They will select 4 or 5 subjects to focus from each article and these are marked with * as seen in Appendix 1 . This aids searching when you want your search to be as relevant as possible to your topic, but should not be used if you want the search to be comprehensive or if the topic is so specific that you expect a small number of citations anyway.
The second concept from our broken-down question is wine consumption and it is relevant to focus this topic in order to exclude articles about alcohol consumption that mention wine in passing.
- In the enter Keyword or phrase box on the Main Search page type wine consumption
- Make sure that the Map Term to Subject Heading box is ticked;
- Select
- Select the box Focus next to the word Wine
- Select
- You decide to include all subheadings so simply select
(it is not necessary to select the 'all subheadings' box).
Note that we didn't look at the tree structure but it was possible to include those steps. You are returned to the Main Search page with the result:
Figure 26: Result of search for Wine where the focus option is selected
We can then combine these terms, and apply a limit to find only review articles.
Any questions? Please contact the MEDLINE Plus help desk:
Tel: 020 7383 6224 or 6737
email: info.medline@bma.org.uk
web: http://www.bma.org.uk/medline