| dc.description.abstract | Introduction: Introduction: The diabetic foot is one of the main complications of diabetes
mellitus, a disease considered a global epidemic. Approximately 15% to 25% of people
with this complication will have foot ulcers throughout their lives. Because the reduction of
loads at the injury site is necessary for healing. For this purpose, offloading devices are
recommended, the effectiveness of which depends on constant use. However, the topic
seems to be little addressed in studies. A quantitative analysis of the literature makes it
possible to outline an overview of scientific publications and point out directions for
research. In the present study, a bibliometric review of the scientific production related to
the adherence of patients with diabetic foot ulcers to offloading resources was carried out.
Methods: The Web Of Science (WoS) database was used. The research was carried out in
the advanced search tab, using the “topics” field. Publications were identified using the
posted terms: cast; offloading, off-loading, offloading device, offloading intervention, nonsurgical offloading, ulcer*, diabetic foot, adherence e patient compliance. Publications in
which the topic was evaluated in the study were included. The VOSviewer Copyright
software was used to analyze the bibliometric indicators of authors, journals, countries,
institutions, collaboration networks and keywords.
Results: A total of 64 publications were found and after manual analysis, 37 publications
were retrieved. The first publication is from 1998 and the largest number of publications
occurred in 2016 (n=6). The publication with the most citations was “Activity patterns of
patients with diabetic foot ulceration - Patients with active ulceration may not adhere to a
standard pressure off-loading regimen” (n=173). Andrew Boulton was the most cited
author (n=318) and Ryan Crews the most active, with 8 publications. Diabetes Care was
identified as the journal with the most publications (n=7) and citations (n=432). The United
States of America was the country with the highest number of publications (n=14) and
England was the country with the most citations in the scientific literature (n=519). The
University of Amsterdam the most prominent institution in terms of number of publications
(n=9) and citations (n=272) on the subject.
Conclusions: The results of this bibliometric study provide a map of the world scientific
production regarding adherence to the use of flushing by patients with diabetic foot ulcers.
The theme is recent and little understood in the scientific literature indexed in WoS. | |
