Latin American and Caribbean Trends and Health Priorities in Cost-Effectiveness Studies: A Bibliometric Analysis in Scopus in the 21st Century

OBJECTIVES: To analyze the trends and priorities in the scientific production on cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) in Latin America and the Caribbean during the first 2 decades of the 21st century.

METHODS: We conducted a bibliometric analysis of published studies on CEA in Latin America reported from 2000 to 2021 in journals indexed in Scopus. We extracted annual research, countries, journals, authors, institutions, citation frequency, and journal metrics. In addition, the results of an author and country cooccurrence analysis were presented as network visualization maps using VOSviewer.

RESULTS: A total of 3017 CEA-related publications were identified, and the majority were original articles (65.6%). We found an increasing trend with a significant correlation (R2: 0.981; P < .001) between the number and date of publication. Brazil was the country with the highest number of publications followed by Mexico and Argentina, in which the greatest production was concentrated in countries with medium and high resources. The largest number of research studies with CEA corresponded to the topics of diabetes mellitus and hypertension. The majority of the most productive journals were extraregional with a Q1 quartile.

CONCLUSIONS: The trend of publications on CEA is increasing in Latin America and the Caribbean, particularly in countries with higher economic income and collaboration networks. It was observed that the trend in the subject of CEA is related to the epidemiology of the region, with emphasis on chronic and infectious diseases.