Systematic Review of Researches on Medical Tourism

Medical tourism is a complex subject for studying. The aim of this study was to dosystematically review, describe, and analyze medical tourism articles from all over the world. In order to perform this systematic review, the databases of Institute for ScientificInformation (ISI), Science Direct, Emerald, Oxford, Magiran, and Scientific InformationDatabase (SID) websites were searched in 2000-2011. The retrieved articles were collected andclassified using descriptive statistics and content analysis. Among the total 28 studied articles, 11 original articles, 3 case studies in Mexico, India,Hungary, Germany, and Iran, and 14 narrative reviews were found. The articles mainly focusedon the definition of medical tourism, medical tourist's motivations and development factors,ethical issues in medical tourism, the impact of medical tourism on health system, and medicaltourism marketing. Our findings indicated similar definition of medical tourism in all articles despitevarious motivations of medical tourists. Nevertheless, there are a wide range of interests andconsequences in studies, as more studies of developing countries showed the benefits of medicaltourism while more developed countries pointed out the consequences of medical tourism.Ultimately, the subject of medical tourism varied according to policies and programs in eachcountry. Therefore, comprehensive and detailed research is required to clarify the issue within thecountry.