Research on return to work in European Union countries.

BACKGROUND Research on return to work (RTW) is increasing. It is important to benefit from studies originating from different countries since certain factors influencing the RTW process are specific to each country. AIMS To compare RTW research in Europe with the USA and to describe research on RTW in Europe. METHODS Medline was scanned with specific search strings to identify studies concerning RTW in Europe, in the USA and in the rest of the world. Characteristics of the European studies were analyzed with two specific tools for bibliometrics research. RESULTS Four thousand five hundred and twenty-five studies were identified (1100, 1005 and 2420 coming from Europe, the USA and the rest of the world, respectively). The European countries producing the greatest number of research papers standardized for population of that country were Sweden, the Netherlands, Finland and Denmark. Sweden was 5.7 times more prolific than the USA. Specialties covered by the European publications included occupational medicine (the subject of 66% of the articles), neurology (36%), environment and public health (32%), physical medicine and rehabilitation (26%) and rheumatology (24%). CONCLUSIONS There is a worldwide trend upwards in the number of publications on RTW. Europe recently overtook the USA in the number of publications per head of population, although there were large differences in publication rates among the European countries. The publications of European researchers on RTW are spread over a wide variety of journals, making access to this research difficult.