[1630] MeSH Term Trends in Pathology, a PubMED Survey of Articles in Pathology Journals

Serdar Balci, Bunyamin Dursun, Tansel Ozyer. Yildirim Beyazit University Ataturk Hospital, Ankara, Turkey; TUBITAK, Ankara, Turkey; TOBB University, Ankara, Turkey

Background: Medical Subject Headings are tagged for each journal article in NCBI database. We wanted to use MeSH terms to observe the alterations in research topics of pathology.
Design: 76 journals whose subject category were pathology in ISI Web of Knowledge Journal Citation Reports 2010 were included. ISSN numbers of these journals were used to download 223787 articles from PubMED in MEDLINE format. 2011 MeSH tree, journal and article properties in MEDLINE format were imported into Oracle database. Number of articles for each term was determined mimicking PubMED's explode function. To correct the numbers in regard to the increase in the publication numbers, term number was divided by article number to define a percentage. These percentages were used to compare the ratio between the last two 5-year-periods and named percent ratio.
Results: Although pathology journal articles constituted 1% of more than 21 million articles in PubMED, they covered 72.6% of total MeSH terms (26140). Last two 5-year were used to determine the recent changes in research fields; where >110% ratio was accepted as increase, <90% was decreased, others as relatively stable. In example, articles tagged with Molecular Diagnostic Techniques, Forensic Pathology, Surgical Pathology, Digestive System Neoplasms and Urogenital Neoplasms were increased whereas Immunohistochemistry and Telepathology were decreased.

Table 1
 # articles 2001-2005# articles 2006-2010Percent ratio
Autopsy371443102
Histocytochemistry95931009590
Immunohistochemistry113941075081
Molecular Diagnostic Techniques71274331
Pathology Department, Hospital252896
Forensic Pathology40317680
Pathology, Clinical305361102
Pathology, Molecular056N/A
Pathology, Surgical207330137
Telepathology645776
Breast Neoplasms1787202497
Digestive System Neoplasms25813660122
Head and Neck Neoplasms2039227896
Nervous System Neoplasms1355146393
Soft Tissue Neoplasms61956178
Urogenital Neoplasms22564510172
Percent ratios were corrected with article numbers; 34973 in 2001-2005 per 40759 in 2006-2010

MeSH terms introduced before and after 2000 were seperately analysed to figure out the changes.

Table 2
 # increased terms# decreased terms# stable terms
Terms introduced after 200082880881
Terms introduced before 2000387862741304



Conclusions: We found NCBI databases useful for determining recent trends in pathology. Analyses including journals of other disciplines or selected MeSH terms can be used for searching the history as well as predicting the future research trends of pathology.
Category: Informatics

Tuesday, March 20, 2012 1:00 PM

Poster Session IV # 229, Tuesday Afternoon

 

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