Quaternary Prevention: Is this Concept Relevant to Public Health? A Bibliometric and Descriptive Content Analysis

Objective To measure and map research output on Quaternary Prevention (P4) and outline research trends; to assess the papers content, mainly regarding methods and subjects approached in order to contribute to the improvement of global knowledge about P4 and to evaluate its relevance for public health. Design Bibliometric and descriptive content analysis. Articles reviewed Scientific articles about P4 recorded in Pubmed, LILACS, Scielo or CINAHL published until August 2018, with correspondent full articles available in Portuguese, English, Spanish, German or French. Main outcome measures Year of publication, first authors’ name and nationality, journals’ name, country and ranking, publication language, used methods and main reported subjects. Results 65 articles were included, published in 33 journals of 16 countries between 2003 and 2018 with a peak of publications in 2015. The first authors came from 17 different countries, 23% of them were Brazilian and Uruguay was the leading nation according to the scientific production per capita. 40% of all the selected articles were in English, 32% in Portuguese, 26% in Spanish. 28% of the papers were published in Q1 or Q2 journals. The research outputs on P4 begun first in the South of Europe, went to South America and then expanded worldwide. 88% of the articles were bibliographic research and 38% of all focused on specific examples of medical overuse (including several screening tests). Conclusions Quaternary prevention represents an ethical and valid approach to prevent occurence of iatrogenic events and to achieve equal and fair access to health services. Conceptual, geographical and linguistic elements, as well as WONCA conferences and type of healthcare systems in the authors’ country were fundamental factors that affected research output. The quality and quantity of available studies is still limited, therefore further investigations are recommended to assess the effective impact of P4 on public health.