UMA ANÁLISE BIBLIOMÉTRICA DA PRODUÇÃO CIENTÍFICA SOBRE INQUÉRITOS DE SAÚDE BUCAL E CÁRIE NAS BASES SCOPUS E WEB OF SCIENCE ENTRE OS ANOS DE 2010 E 2021

Diseases that affect oral health are topics of epidemiological studies due to their high prevalence and severity. Dental caries is considered the most common oral disease worldwide. Knowledge of the epidemiological situation contributes to the formulation of public policies, in the provision and execution of oral health services in a community. The purpose of the present study was to carry out a bibliometric analysis of scientific productions on oral health and caries surveys between 2010 and 2021. The articles were selected from the Scopus and Web of Science databases and the search strategy was limited to the Descriptors in Health Sciences (DeCS): “dental caries”, “oral health”, and “dental health surveys”. The search resulted in 906 articles and the RStudio® software ensured the extraction, manipulation, and provision of technical results on oral health surveys from the world's scientific production. Considering the country of the corresponding author, Brazil leads the scientific production, Saudi Arabia stands out in research with international cooperation and the authors' preference for the publication in “Community Dentistry and Oral Epidemiology” journal is clear. The conceptual structure demonstrated the strength of integration between authors and publication sources, the intellectual structure revealed the co-citation network and the history of investigations, and the social structure revealed collaborative networks between authors, institutions and countries. Therefore, bibliometrics allows a structured analysis of the large volume of information in science, contributes to the review of previous investigations and presents the direction of future research.