Characteristics of Palliative Care Publications by South American Authors in the Last 20 Years: Systematic Literature Review With Bibliometric Analysis

Context: Research on palliative care (PC) can be used as a direct measure to assess the level of PC development in a country or region.

Objectives: To investigate the scientific production in the field of PC in South American countries over the last two decades.

Methods: The search was performed using the terms "palliative care," "hospice care," "hospices," and "terminal care" combined with the names of South American countries in several databases. The trend in publications over time was analyzed by linear equations (R²) and by calculating the annual percentage change (APC). The article citations were extracted from Web of Science (WOS), Scopus and Google Scholar, and the countries' impact factors (IFc) were calculated.

Results: Of the 4259 identified articles, 641 were included in the analysis. There was a clear increase in the number of publications over the analyzed period (R² = 0.8794, APC = 14.42%). Brazil was the country with the highest number of publications (n = 389); however, after adjustments by population, GDP and number of researchers, Chile was the country with the greatest prominence, including the highest IF in WOS (4.409). Only 8.3% of publications were systematic review, clinical trial or cohort studies; only 15.4% were funded.

Conclusion: This bibliometric review identified an annual increase of 14% in the number of scientific publications by researchers from South America over the last 20 years. Although Brazil produced the most articles, Chile, had the most efficient scientific production. In general, the articles had low potential for scientific impact.