Abstract
Since the early 1960s, long-term care (LTC) has attracted a broad range of attention from public health practitioners and researchers worldwide and produced a large volume of literature. We conducted a comprehensive scientometric review based on 14,019 LTC articles retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection database from 1963 to 2018, to explore the status and trends of global LTC research. Using CiteSpace software, we conducted collaboration analysis, document co-citation analysis, and keyword co-occurrence analysis. The results showed a rapid increase in annual LTC publications, while the annual citation counts exhibited an inverted U-shaped relationship with years. The most productive LTC research institutions and authors are located primarily in North American and European countries. A simultaneous analysis of both references and keywords revealed that common LTC hot topics include dementia care, quality of care, prevalence and risk factors, mortality, and randomized controlled trial. In addition, LTC research trends have shifted from the demand side to the supply side, and from basic studies to practical applications. The new research frontiers are frailty in elderly people and dementia care. This study provides an in-depth understanding of the current state, popular themes, trends, and future directions of LTC research worldwide.
Highlights
The aging population is growing at an unprecedented rate worldwide
Our study differs from previous research in three ways: we reviewed long-term care (LTC) research as a whole instead of focusing on its subfields; we used a broad literature search for all relevant articles instead of focusing on the key articles from specified journals; and we used a quantitative method to objectively review LTC research, complementing earlier reviews
The 14,019 LTC research articles were published in 18 different languages, English
Summary
The aging population is growing at an unprecedented rate worldwide. According to the 2017Revision of the World Population Prospects, the global proportion of people aged 65 years and over has risen from 5.08% in 1950 to 8.29% in 2015 and is expected to reach 15.82% by 2050 [1]. People are generally at substantial risk of functional limitations and physical disability, creating a great demand for long-term care (LTC) services. Within this context, developing an effective, equitable, and sustainable LTC system to meet the escalating demand becomes increasingly important. In the last half century, LTC has been a major public health issue in most industrialized countries, and a variety of LTC systems have been established based on a mix of financing sources [2,3,4] These systems have grown rapidly, reflecting their popularity among the elderly, they have faced several challenges, including skyrocketing costs and workforce shortages [5,6]. Some developing countries have started to pay attention to LTC in recent years because their demands for it are rising dramatically at a rate that exceeds that experienced by industrialized countries [7,8,9]
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