OBJECTIVES: Integral therapeutic care, including pharmaceutical care, is a right guaranteed to all citizens, being part of the list of services provided by the Brazilian Unified Health System. The health litigation has risen in the country and medicines represent the most requested items.The study investigated the profile and representativeness of the participation of high-cost medicines (MAC) among the medicines cited in Brazilian scientific and academic production on health judicialization, describing their main characteristics in 2005-2022.

METHODS: A scoping review of articles, dissertations, and theses containing information on the judicialization of HCM in Brazil, with public government entities as defendants. We used the bibliographic databases MEDLINE, EMBASE, LILACS, SCOPUS, Web of Science, and the Brazilian Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations. Two researchers performed selection and data extraction independently, with disagreements resolved by a third reviewer.

RESULTS: After selection, 62 articles and 66 academic products were included, most from the period between 2016 and 2022. The states were the main defendants involved, alone or jointly with other government entities. Studies were predominantly carried out in the Southeast and South regions of the country. There was a high proportion of HCMs judicialized outside the official SUS lists. When present, they were mainly medicines from the Specialized Component of Pharmaceutical Assistance, which includes products with higher unit or treatment costs, requested for indications other than those recommended in clinical protocols or for off-label use. The MACs recurrently mentioned in 30% or more of the studies were: adalimumab; bevacizumab; tiotropium bromide; quetiapine hemifumarate; infliximab; short- and long-acting insulin analogues; methylphenidate; ranibizumab; rituximab and trastuzumab.

CONCLUSIONS: The heterogeneity in how judicialized medicines were brought into the studies and the conceptual imprecision identified make it challenging to get a clearer view of the importance of HCM in the scenario of health lititigation in Brazil.