Introduction:

Obesity is a form of malnutrition whose figures have increased alarmingly in recent years.

Objective:

To analyze the scientific production carried out by nursing professionals on childhood obesity in the last five years.

Methods:

A bibliometric analysis was carried out in Scopus database. Original open access articles were included, carried out by nursing professionals from 2017 to 2021.

Results:

One thousand two hundred seven (1207) original articles were included; the annual growth was 3.7%; the most productive author was Keith Godfrey of the University of Southampton (n = 23; 1.91%). The Liggins Institute at the University of Auckland was ranked as the institution with the most publications (n = 13; 1.08%) and Nutrients journal as the most influential (n = 223; 18.48%). The English language was preferred for the publications and the majority (n = 9) belonged to quartile 1. The most cited article was the one by Pietrobelli et al, published in 2020 with 167.5 citations per year. The terms most used by the researchers were childhood obesity, pediatric obesity, waist circumference index, physical activity and body weight gain.

Conclusions:

Nursing scientific production on childhood obesity has increased in recent years; the most influential authors and institutions are in the United States; the most important journals publish in English and in quartile 1; the most frequently used terms refer to childhood obesity and its predictive factors.