The following are some of the major components of a record in MeSH with explanations for each provided below the image:
1) Subheadings: select one or more of these to search within a specific aspect of the subject heading; select these to add greater focus to your search
2) MeSH Major Topic: retrieves articles that are greatly focused to the subject heading topic; select these to add even greater focus to your search
3) MeSH Hierarchy Searching Off: MeSH is arranged in a hierarchy and marking this box keeps the search only about the MeSH term you have selected and not about any terms which might fall under it; this adds specificity to a search
4) Entry Terms: these are some of the terms that are covered by the use of the subject heading
5) Previous Indexing: if the topic had a different subject heading in the past, it will be noted here; note: if you want to use MeSH to search for the topic during the years it was indexed under a different subject heading, you will need to search using the previous indexing term (the years in which the previous term was used will be noted next to the hyperlinked previous term)
6) MeSH Tree Hierarchy: this shows where the subject heading falls in the MeSH hierarchy; the terms go from most specific at the bottom to more general as you go up (Note: this is the hierarchy referred to in number 3)
7) PubMed Search Builder: this is where you place MeSH terms via the "Add to search builder" button to be used later in a PubMed search; here you can also specify if you want AND, OR, or NOT between terms; once your search is constructed click on the "Search PubMed" button to run the search in PubMed
8) Related Information: click on one of the resource links to run a search using the subject heading listed at the top of the page
9) Search Details: this shows the search details of the search that was run in the MeSH database to arrive at the current subject heading record
