Latin American scientific production on malnutrition in ambulatory older adults with progression to sarcopenia in Scopus.

Abstract

Introduction: Malnutrition is a global problem that affects millions of people around the world, especially the elderly. Among the possible consequences of malnutrition in the elderly is sarcopenia or loss of muscle mass.Objective: To characterize the trends and impact of scientific production on malnutrition in ambulatory older adults with progression to sarcopenia published in Scopus between 2019 and 2022 in the Latin American context.Methods: An observational, descriptive, cross-sectional, bibliometric study was carried out. The data used in the study in question were obtained from the Dimensions database. Pearson's linear correlation was used to perform the trend analysis of the data.Results: The most productive years were 2020 (175 articles) and 2021 (160 articles), with the least productive being 2022 (31 articles). The year with the highest number of citations was represented by 2019 (15795 citations) for 53.74% and the year with the lowest number was 2022 (2141 citations) for 7.29%. Of the total citations, 6552 were considered self-citations. The results corroborate the hegemony of countries like Brazil (176 articles) and Mexico (110 articles). Cuba ranks 14th in Latin America with respect to the production of articles on the subject of study.Conclusions: A low Latin American scientific production on malnutrition in ambulatory older adults with progression to sarcopenia was evidenced in journals indexed in Scopus, with published articles and citations that follow a direct line towards reduction.