Objective:

To analyze the international scientific production on palliative care using the Scopus database as the source for obtaining the data.

Method:

Cross-sectional descriptive study. The data was obtained from the Scopus database, using the term “Palliative care” in the title, abstract and keyword fields. The period studied was from the beginning of indexing in this database until December 31, 2021.

Results:

Evolution of growing scientific production (R2 = 0.75). The number of originals was 55,376 (69.73%), with the frequency and percentage of citable articles being 66,781 (84.09%). Obsolescence was 37 ± 2.52 years with a Price Index of 6.67%. The predominant language of publication was English, in 66,539 (83.79%) references and the most producing country, the United States of America, 22,482 (28.31%) documents.

Conclusions:

The metric indicators obtained were in line with other areas of knowledge related to health sciences. Although, the results on obsolescence were higher than expected. The scientific production presented an adequate linear increase without reaching the exponential model. The predominance of the English language and mainstream publications confirm the tendency to publish in the journals with the highest impact indicators.

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