INVESTIGATING SUBJECTS AND QUANTITY OF ARTICLES RELATED WITH MEDICAL ETHICS IN ISLAMIC COUNTRIES, EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN REGION OF WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION, INDEXED ON PUBMED

Abstract Introduction: Among different branches of professional ethics, medical ethics has a specific position due to the high and special level of professional ethics. Medical ethics is also considered especially in Islamic teachings. Due to novelty advancements in medical science in recent years, new and deep discussions have proposed on medical ethics field that considered issues on medical ethics can be specified via investigating articles as well as the domains searching on these issues and also one can infer the priorities considered by the authors of above articles and domains regarding medical ethics that have not been nor studied or investigated up to now will be determined in that investigators can have participation on these fields based on their national and regional priorities. Methodology: This article is the review study that by referring to PubMed data base, the articles were investigated based on 19 titles includes 15 titles of 24 titles related to the introduced bioethics by health information section of Medline Plus as well as 4 titles related to war, research, education and medical ethics principles, indexed in PubMed that published by investigators in Islamic countries in Eastern Mediterranean region (EMRO) of WHO. Findings: The articles were categorized and compared based on the year of publication, country and the study title. The minimum number of articles based on the country in Time Zone from 1971 to 2012 with one article related to countries such as Djibouti and Palestine and the maximum amount that were 71 were related to country of Iran. Also, the minimum number of article based on year was one article in years of 1971, 1978, 1979 and 1984 the maximum ones were 39 in 2012. The minimum number based on title was an article on clinical trials and fraud in health and the maximum number were 64 on the principles of medical ethics.  Conclusion: This survey is only to investigate the articles related to index medical ethics on PubMed in Islamic countries of Eastern Mediterranean region of WHO. Although additional studies are necessary to complete the information on this field but this article is considered as the first one with categorizing medical ethics articles with the approach of variability of issue and since the origin of their publication is in Islamic countries, is exclusive can be the basis of wider studies and investigating different dimensions in the future. The studies containing medical ethics in our country should be based on goal as well as national and regional priorities to meet the needs of Islamic Iranian nation.