(en anglais)

The new DeCS/MeSH website brings new features to facilitate the search and usage of Health Sciences descriptors!

The changes are focused on the site interface to promote better usability and accessibility. The contents of DeCS/MeSH remain the same, being updated annually. For more information on Health Sciences Descriptors, visit About DeCS.

The main improvements are:

• Search in any language (English, French, Portuguese or Spanish) independently of the portal interface
• The default search is for Any term even if it is present in the middle of the expression that makes up the descriptor or its synonym, also known as Key Word In Context (or KWIC)
• The search expression is highlighted in light yellow in the result
• Individualized visualization of the concepts that integrate the records
• The use of the asterisk * at the beggining or at the end of the search expression to retrieve more results

Search by any word or term, keywords in context (or KWIC), exact term, descriptor ID, tree number, and qualifier term were updated and maintained.

The Health Sciences Descriptors (DeCS) thesaurus, produced by BIREME/PAHO/WHO, is a hierarchically organized controlled vocabulary derived from the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) thesaurus produced by the US National Library of Medicine (NLM).

In English, French, Portuguese and Spanish, DeCS/MeSH is used to index technical and scientific literature from the biomedical and health sciences, as well as to search and retrieve information in the Virtual Health Library (VHL) databases.