MedlinePlus – Your Starting Point for Reliable Health Information

AN OVERVIEW

You can stop Googling health topics.  Accurate health and medical information is too important to risk being influenced by fads, commercial bias, or self-proclaimed experts.  There’s a better way.

Search MedlinePlus for Health Info You Can Trust

Begin any search for health and medical information at MedlinePlus, a free service provided by the U.S. National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health.  It is authoritative, comprehensive, and up-to-date. MedlinePlus also helps you discover numerous other reliable health websites.  In fact, if you’re getting medical and health information from a site that MedlinePlus doesn’t link to, be cautious.

Types of Health Info Found at MedlinePlus

What kind of health information will you find at MedlinePlus?  Currently, 800 health topics on conditions, disease, and wellness are organized both alphabetically and by subject.  Of course, you always enter a term in the MedlinePlus search box.  Learn about anything from “Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm” to “Zoonoses” (animal diseases that people can catch).

In addition, find information on the following:

• Drugs, Supplements and Herbal Information - Check for any recalls, market withdrawals, or safety alerts.  Find drugs in clinical research studies.  Search PubMed for research articles on a specific drug.
• Medical Encyclopedia - Over 4,000 articles about diseases, tests, symptoms, injuries, and surgeries.  It includes an extensive library of medical photographs and illustrations.
• Health News- Health-related news articles from Reuters Health Information and HealthDay, plus the most recent press announcements from major medical organizations.
• Health Provider Directories - Find doctors, dentists, specialists, hospitals and clinics.
• Go Local – Find health-related resources in your geographical area.
• Senior Health - An easy-to-use site that features health and wellness information for older adults.  Buttons at the top of the page allow you to make the text bigger, change text color, or hear the text read aloud.
• Interactive Tutorials – Watch interactive tutorials that use animated graphics to explain diseases and conditions, tests and diagnostic procedures, and surgery and treatment procedures in easy-to-read language.  You can also listen to the tutorials.
• Clinical Trials - A registry of federally and privately supported clinical trials conducted in the United States and around the world.  Find information about a trial’s purpose, who may participate, locations, and phone numbers for more details.
• Videos of Surgical Procedures - Prerecorded webcasts of actual operations performed at medical centers in the United States since January 2004.  The videos last an hour.  (Perhaps not for the faint-hearted.)

Easy To Understand Health Info

If you have ever felt like a medical jargon illiterate, don’t worry.  MedlinePlus makes consumer health information easy to understand with simple language, graphics, tutorials, and audio.  The site can also be viewed in Spanish.

Take the MedlinePlus Tour for an audio and visual demonstration of how to use the site.  (Find it under “Related Videos” to the right.)  It’s only 8 minutes long, and you’ll be amazed at the breadth and depth of health topic coverage that is provided.

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