| Verified against primary record | |
| Definition in MeSH | International travel undertaken for medical care.[1] |
|---|---|
| Record identifier | D057193.[1] |
| Record checked | 2026-09-25. |
| The definition was checked against the National Library of Medicine’s vocabulary record. This verifies the recorded definition, not any treatment or provider. | |
Medical tourism is travel to another country undertaken to receive medical treatment or care. This is the scope recorded in Medical Subject Headings, or MeSH, the US National Library of Medicine’s vocabulary for indexing biomedical literature, checked on 2026-09-25.[1]
A scholarly definition is narrower: Crooks and colleagues’ 2010 scoping review describes intentional travel abroad for non-emergency medical services.[2] The definitions agree on travel for care, but the review explicitly limits its subject to non-emergency treatment.[1][2]
Usage in medical travel
The CDC’s 2026 Yellow Book includes dental care, cosmetic surgery, fertility treatment and cancer treatment within medical tourism.[3] Its clinical account identifies treatment availability, cost, and a shared language or culture with a healthcare professional as possible reasons for travelling.[3]
Combining treatment with a holiday is possible, but a holiday is not part of the MeSH definition.[1][3] Under the intentional-travel definition used by Crooks and colleagues, unexpected treatment during an unrelated holiday falls outside the concept.[2]
Related terms
In UNWTO’s 2019 terminology, health tourism encompasses medical tourism and wellness tourism.[4] MeSH instead lists health tourism as an alternative indexing term for medical tourism, so the two classification systems do not use the phrase identically.[1][4]
See also
- Health tourism, the broader UNWTO category that contains both medical and wellness tourism
- Wellness tourism, the adjacent subtype, covering preventive and lifestyle travel
- International patients, how people treated in a cross-national context are identified and counted
- Cross-border healthcare, the EU legal framing, which also covers remote and contracted care
References
- US National Library of Medicine. Medical Tourism: MeSH descriptor D057193. Verified against primary record: vocabulary entry opened and read. Retrieved 2026-09-25.
- Crooks VA, Kingsbury P, Snyder J, Johnston R. What is known about the patient’s experience of medical tourism? A scoping review. BMC Health Services Research. 2010;10:266. Independently reported: peer-reviewed review; definition checked in the abstract. Retrieved 2026-09-25.
- Stoney RJ, Leidel L. Medical Tourism. CDC Yellow Book, 2026 edition; published 2025-04-23. Independently reported: official clinical synthesis. Retrieved 2026-09-25.
- World Tourism Organization. UNWTO Tourism Definitions. 2019, pp. 38-40. Verified against primary record: published terminology. Retrieved 2026-09-25.
Sourcing note: The MeSH record and UNWTO definitions were opened directly on 2026-09-25. The scholarly review and CDC chapter are independently reported sources; their underlying studies were not independently rechecked. No provider-supplied claims are included.