Telephone intervention to reduce burden and improve quality of life among dementia caregivers: a bibliometric analysis from 2017 to 2022

• Main Authors: Syed Ahmad, Syarifah Amirah, Mat Zin, Nora, Mohd Tohit, Noorlaili, Abd. Aziz, Karimah Hanim, Nasreen, Hashima E
• Format: Proceeding Paper
• Language: English
• Published: 2022
• Subjects: RA0421 Public health. Hygiene. Preventive Medicine; RA790 Mental Health. Mental Illness Prevention
• Online Access: http://irep.iium.edu.my/107871/1/107871_Telephone%20intervention.pdf; http://irep.iium.edu.my/107871/

Background and Aims: Caring for a person suffering with dementia is a major public health challenge as it contributes to psychiatric and physical illness among the caregivers. The number of people living with dementia is estimated to rise to 115.4 million by 2050. This bibliometric analysis was aim to explore the trend of telephone intervention among family carers of community dwelling people living with dementia during the past five years. Methods: Using the keywords “dementia”, “carers”, and “telephone”, we retrieved publications discussing on telephone-intervention among dementia caregivers appearing in the PubMed/MEDLINE from 2017 to 2022. Results: The total number of 199 publications that discussed on telephone-intervention in analysing the burdens of dementia caregivers increased three-fold in the last five years, with Australia, China and the USA being the top three countries with the highest publications, suggesting that these countries have made many scientific contributions to this field of research. Most telephone-delivered intervention were conducted in high income countries, but only a few in middle and low income countries, such as Malaysia. Retrieved articles were published mostly in journals with impact factors ranging between 3.0 to 4.0, mainly the BMC Geriatrics, Aging & Mental Health and BMJ Open, that specialize in mental health and healthcare of older people. Over the five-year period, quality of life was consistently one of the most frequent terms discussed for this research field. Other top rankings were anxiety, neuropsychiatric symptoms, social support, dementia care, and covid-19. Conclusion: Dementia research has grown markedly in the past years, not only on the patient but the caregivers as well. The impact factor of journals and strong collaborations between highlydeveloped countries support that the quality of published research has improved. While quality of life was a consistently dominant research focus, other topics gained much attention during this time period too. These findings provide a framework for analysing the current status caregivers of person with dementia (PWD) quality of life research and establishing a complete approach for furthering the subject.