Is Pediatric Dentistry a Topic of Interest for Pediatric Journals? A Scoping Review

Abstract

Background: Pediatric dentistry shares many skills with pediatrics. This review evaluates the amount of literature on pediatric dentistry in the first 30 pediatric journals classified by the Web of Science in 2019. The aim was to perform a quantitative analysis of the main dental topics addressed. Methods: A scoping review with the PRISMA-ScR criteria was performed. The Clarivate Analytics Journal Citation Report was consulted for journals ranked in the category “Pediatrics” in 2019. Papers were searched in PubMed using an ad hoc prepared string. Results: A total of 504 papers were included. Papers on dental hard tissues were the most prevalent (45.6%), followed by dental public health (23.2%), orofacial development (15.3%), soft tissues related conditions (12.3%), and orofacial trauma (3.6%). Increasing trends have been observed for total papers published (R2 = 0.9822) and total dental papers (R2 = 0.8862), with no statistically significant differences (χ2(6) = 0.051 p > 0.05). The majority of papers (n = 292, 57.9%) were cited between 1 and 10 times, whilst less than 7% of papers received more than 40 citations. Discussion: It is desirable that papers on pediatric dentistry increase in the pediatric scenario, allowing the two related disciplines to intertwine more in the future.