Diabetic foot (PD) is one of the main complications of diabetes mellitus, being characterized by the presence of ulcers, infection or destruction of deep tissues of the feet and even by the loss of sensitivity of that member in its carriers. Ulcerations can lead to a worse quality of life, because as an ulcer develops, mobility is compromised, requiring the reduction of mechanical loads on the site to favor healing of the lesion. A form of intervention called offloading has been used to redistribute weight on the soles of the feet. It is necessary to consider the factors that involve the patient's adherence to such treatment. However, the topic seems to be little addressed in the literature. From a bibliometric review, it is possible to delimit an overview of publications and point out directions for research.

To carry out a bibliometric review of the scientific production related to the adherence of patients with diabetic foot ulcers to offloading resources.

This is a cross-sectional and quantitative study. For the search and extraction of data, the Web Of Science (WoS) database was used. The search was carried out in the advanced search tab, using the "topics" field, with the terms: cast, offloading, off-loading, offloading device, offloading intervention, non-surgical offloading, ulcer*, diabetic foot, adherence, and patient compliance. Articles in which adherence was only mentioned or not mentioned were excluded. For the analysis of the results, the software VOSviewer Copyright © was used. The data were organized in table, graph and graph format.

The search strategy used resulted in 64 documents that were reduced to 37 after manual analysis. A total of 29 publications were made between 2014 and 2022, with the largest number occurring in 2016 (n=6). The most cited publication was “Activity patterns of patients with diabetic foot ulceration - Patients with active ulceration may not adhere to a standard pressure off-loading regimen” by David Armstrong, Lawrence Larvey, Heather Kimbriel and Andrew Boulton. The journal Diabetes Care had the highest number of publications. 134 authors published on the subject of this review. The University of Amsterdam institution was featured in publications. England, USA and Netherlands were the most cited countries.

The findings of this study provided information on the development of research on the subject over the years. The small number of publications on this topic indicates a gap in the scientific literature, pointing to the need for further studies, mainly to define how adherence to treatment will be measured. In addition, the publications found were in English and concentrated in the northern hemisphere, requiring data from other regions.

We believe that this study can be useful to professionals who are seeking to know the panorama of publications on adherence of patients with PD to offloading devices and understand its relevance as an emerging research topic.