Trends in use of the new MeSH term “Overdiagnosis” - A scoping review

Abstract

The MeSH term for “Overdiagnosis” was officially introduced on the 7th Sep 2021. Our primary aim is to describe trends in what is published under the MeSH term “Overdiagnosis". Our primary aim is to describe trends in what is published under the MeSH term “overdiagnosis”, since it was introduced as a formal MeSH in 2021, i.e. number of articles per month; which disease areas; which topics; whether it is truly about overdiagnosis (versus concepts like misdiagnosis or false positives); in which journals; the article type; country of publication; language; and the articles’ reach (number of citations, Altmetric score etc.). Our secondary aim is to compare the results of a search using the MeSH term “overdiagnosis” with the results of a simple text search for the word “overdiagnosis”. These searches will be restricted to publications after the introduction of the MeSH term “overdiagnosis” to identify any relevant publications missed under the MeSH term. Lastly, we aim to build a publicly accessible database with the MeSH search results (restricted to those truly about overdiagnosis) and the coding scheme for transparency and for others to use. We plan to update the database annually. Domain being studied: The MeSH term “Overdiagnosis” and the text word “overdiagnosis”, with variations