Worldwide Original Research Production on Maternal Near-Miss: A 10-year Bibliometric Study

To evaluate the global productivity regarding original articles on maternal near-miss (MNM).

We conducted a bibliometric analysis of original articles published from 2008 to November 2019 in the journals indexed in the Scopus database. The averages of the number of articles by author, of the number of authors by article, of the number of citations by article, and the total number of documents with one or more authors were obtained. An analysis of the co-citation of authors and a co-occurrence analysis of the terms included in the titles and abstracts were performed and were presented as network visualization maps.

A total of 326 original articles were analyzed. There was an increase in the number of articles (p < 0.001; average annual growth rate = 12.54%). A total of 1,399 authors, an average number of articles per author of 4.29, with an index of authors per document of 0.23, and an index of co-authors per document of 8.16 were identified. A total of 85 countries contributed with original articles on MNM. Among the top ten countries regarding the contribution of articles, five were low and middle-income countries (LMICs). Brazil had the highest volume of production (31.1%), followed by the US (11.5%). Terms related to countries and the measurement of the rates and cases of MNM and the associated factors were found in recent years in the analysis of the co-occurrence of terms.

There was an increase in the production of original articles on MNM, with a significant participation of authors and institutions from LMICs, which reveals a growing interest in the use of MNM indicators to improve the quality of maternal health care.