BIBLIOMETRIC ANALYSIS OF STUDIES ON CATASTROPHIC HEALTH EXPENDITURES

According to World Health Organization, after meeting basic needs of household, spending on health equal to or more than 40 percent of their income is called catastrophic health expenditures (CHE). Individuals' out-of-pocket expenses for advanced treatments and the risk of being exposed to catastrophe have increased considerably. Accordingly, CHE has become an up-to-date and open field in scientific research. In this study, it is aimed to reveal bibliometric analysis of studies related to CHE in order to identify research gaps in field. A total of 705 studies on CHE published between 2002-2021 were included in the analysis by applying certain search strategies in the Web of Science database. The data were analyzed by dividing into two periods with SciMat bibliometric analysis program. As a result of the examinations, it has been determined that themes of ‘depression, costs of illness’, and ‘hemodialysis, aging, direct costs’ in isolated themes are areas of study that are open to development in the field of CHE. As a result of these findings, in future, researchers may conduct studies to determine level of CHE exposure, incidence and determinants of CHE for individuals in a certain disease and risk group.