Bibliometric analysis of the scientific evidence on violence perpetrated against the elderly

The scope of this study is violence perpetrated against the elderly. It aims to analyze the international scientific production on violence against the elderly. It involved bibliometric research carried out in the ISI Web of Knowledge/Web of ScienceTM database, in which the search terms "elder,"violence" or "abuse" and "health care" were used, in the period between the years 1991 and 2016. The data were analyzed considering the evolution of the annual publications, the journals with the highest number of records, the authors with the highest number of publications, the number of articles distributed by authors' country of origin, and articles with the highest impact. A total of 267 published records in 174 different journals indexed to the database in question were identified and were written by 901 authors with links to 410 institutions located in 39 countries. In the descriptive analysis of the content of the top journals on the topic and of the most cited articles there was potential for the development of the topic, since there is a need for more data on interventions in cases of violence against the elderly, with a multidisciplinary approach, as well as conducting more research on clinical manifestations, quality of life and its economic impact on the use of health services.