Article Text
Abstract
Objective To assess the impact of COVID-19 on the palliative care (PC) publication trend in the last 10 years and the collaboration between countries and main topics that were discussed in the papers.
Methods We used Scopus to identify publications on PC between 2012 and 2021 and publications about PC and COVID-19 between 2020 and 2021. We used VOSviewer to assess the main topics using the keywords from the papers and to assess country collaboration.
Results 1937 publications resulted. An increase in publications about PC was observed during the pandemic, only partially explained by OVID-19-related publications. Cancer-related PC publications were the ones with the most marked increase. We identified six clusters in the distribution of the keywords: bioethics, cancer, nursing home/telemedicine, public health, caring and PC following the WHO definition. The countries with higher number of publications were the United States and England.
Conclusion We showed an increase in the number of PC publications in the last 2 years that was only partially explained by COVID-19-related publications. Most of the publications increase was due to cancer-related publications, since, during the time of the pandemic, publications on cancer and PC increased markedly, while those on heart failure, lung disease and dementia, remained constant.
- terminal care
- supportive care
- family management
- end of life care
- ethics
- COVID-19
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Data availability statement
Data are available upon request.
Footnotes
Twitter @valgonzalezjllo
AB and VG-J contributed equally.
Contributors AB collected, analysed the data using VosViewer and drafted the manuscript. VG-J conceived the study, contributed to the data analysis, drafted the manuscript, and acts as a guarantor. ASE and SE contributed to the review of the manuscript. All authors approved the final version.
Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Competing interests None declared.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; internally peer reviewed.
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