Introduction: Mass gatherings medicine has been a rapidly evolving area of expertise for many years, with pearls and pitfalls emerging from more recent literature. Gaps have been identified: lack of a pragmatic definition, weaknesses in data sets used to report on major events, difficulties with developing tools to help organizers assess health, and safety issues, etc. This study aims to map and describe the current body of literature on mass gatherings in order to identify strengths and weaknesses, thus further guiding research in the field. Methods: This study is a bibliometric review. Using the broad research terms “mass gatherings” and “major planned events,” PubMed, Web of Science, and Google Scholar were searched for publications up to Sept. 14, 2024. No restrictions on language or type of articles were used. All grey literature was included. After removal of duplicates, two independent reviewers confirmed relevance, and articles were organized according to date of publication, region, type of event (7), main subject categories (11), and authorship, as well as strength of publication. Further analyses for co-citations and co-authorship, as well as timelines, have been conducted using VOSViewer (v.1.6.20). Results: Initial database searches yielded 4526 results. After removal of duplicates and non-related articles, 898 publications remained and have been categorized, dating from 1978 to 2024. At the time of submission of this abstract, in-depth analysis of each category is underway to further regroup articles and identify gaps in knowledge. Co-citations and co-authorship analyses are also being conducted, yet results are not readily available. Conclusion: Mass gatherings health and safety literature has grown rapidly over the past few years. This study identified areas of strong knowledge to build upon, while more scarce areas, like psychosocial aspects and quality evaluation, are still in need of significant development.
Pigeon et al. (Sun,) studied this question.