Neurological Impacts of Covid-19 and Worldwide Scientific Production about the Subject: A Bibliometric Analysis

Resumo

Introduction: The novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) was first reported by officials in Wuhan City, in December 2019. It has rapidly spread with confirmed cases in almost every country across the world and has caused a global public health crisis.¹ The epidemiological update of the World Health Organization on
9th March 2021 showed that over 2.7 million new cases were reported. In this article, a biblometrical analysis of trending topics and what is being researched regarding COVID-19 and its neurological involvement is done. Methods: This research was conducted on the Web of Science Core Collection (WoS). For research in WoS, keywords in English were used, according to DeCS - Descriptors in Health Sciences. The search strategy with Boolean operators was: TS = (SARS-CoV-2 OR COVID-19) AND TS=(Neurologic Findings OR Neurology OR Neurologic Manifestations). Results: In total, 392 scientific productions were identified and included in this bibliometric analysis. The studies were published
in the period between March 2020 and March 2021, with records prevalent in the themes of clinical neurology (n=234) and neurosciences (n=134), as well as several other areas. The thirty studies collected a total of 3395 citations, with variations from 1433 to 26 and average of 113 citations per study. All were
published in 2020, with bigger prevalence in July (nine articles) and June (six articles). Conclusion: It is expected that this bibliometric survey will serve as a manner of presenting the main topics of study within neurology before COVID-19, in addition providing guidance for future research.