A bibliometric of research trends in acupuncture for spinal cord injury: Quantitative and qualitative analyses

Abstract

Introduction: Spinal cord injury (SCI) is a severe disease of the central nervous system with a very high disability rate that seriously a ects the daily life of patients. Acupuncture is one of the rehabilitation therapies that has shown significant e cacy in treating post-SCI complications such as motor disorders, neuropathic pain, and neurogenic bladder. Current studies have focused on the e ectiveness and mechanisms of acupuncture for SCI, but no studies are available to analyze the bibliometrics of publications related to this area.Methods: Publications related to acupuncture for SCI were retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection for quantitative and qualitative analyses. The quantitative analysis was unfolded in the following six main areas: annual publications, countries, institutions, authors, sources, and keywords. The qualitative analysis section screened out publications with high annual citation rates and categorized them according to the study content.Results: There were relevant publications, more than half of which were journal articles. The number of publications showed a fluctuating upward trend. China and the United States were hub countries for related publications and had extensive cooperation with other countries. The most relevant author was Yuanshan Zeng from Sun Yat-sen University, China. The e cacy and mechanism of acupuncture for neuropathic pain after SCI was the first research hotspot in this field, and electroacupuncture was the most widely used technique. In the past years, the mechanism of acupuncture to improve the local microenvironment of SCI and promote nerve regeneration had become a new research trend. At the same time, acupuncture had been gradually applied to various complications after SCI and in veterinary medicine. Conclusion:The findings suggest that research on acupuncture for SCI is still flourishing, and more research on electroacupuncture for promoting nerve repair and regeneration after SCI will be available in the future.

Research trends on acupuncture for neuropathic pain: A bibliometric analysis from 1979 to 2023

“…As a severe disease of the central nervous system, spinal cord injury (SCI) often caused central neuropathic pain. [ 33 ] However, an accumulating body of research found that acupuncture can effectively improve NP related to SCI. On the 1 hand, acupuncture may inhibiting apoptosis caused by SCI, including oligodendrocytes and microglia.…”

Worldwide productivity and research trend of publications concerning electroactive materials and spinal cord injury: A bibliometric study

“…Bibliometrix is a scientific bibliometric software developed by Federico II University of Naples, Italy, using the R programming language. Consistent with past research, the R 4.0.3 bibliometrix program is used to automatically transform and evaluate publication data (Huang et al, 2022;Xiong et al, 2022). The research contains the number of publications each year, the number of publications by nation, an analysis of authors and institutions, an analysis of journals, co-cited references, and important terms.…”

“…The total number of citations for these 1,330 papers was 1,286, as seen in Figure 1C, which depicts average yearly citation rates. The average number of citations per year is calculated by dividing the total number of citations by the number of years after publication (Huang et al, 2022). The greater the average number of citations each year, the more the article serves as a foundation for study in its subject or as a research hotspot during the year (Xiong et al, 2022).…”

“…Spinal cord injuries are classified as primary or secondary (Yuan et al, 2021). Primary spinal cord injury resulting in axonal disruption, neural tissue destruction and neuronal death, with partial functional repair primarily through surgical decompression and spinal fixation (Antar et al, 2018;Huang et al, 2022). Secondary injuries are long-term progressive injuries that occur after the primary injury resulting in lesion spread and stage destruction, including neuronal/axonal loss, formation of a neuroregenerative inhibitory microenvironment and glial scarring (Doherty et al, 2002;Wang et al, 2022).…”

Extracellular vesicles as a new frontier of diagnostic biomarkers in osteosarcoma diseases: a bibliometric and visualized study

“…Bibliometric assessment mainly focuses on the collaboration networks of authors, institutions, and countries and the interrelation of individual journals and institutions in this field ( 9 ). Currently, bibliometrics are broadly used in many subjects, including neurological system ( 10 ), digestive system ( 11 ), and cancer ( 12 ) research, among others. Notably, the bibliometric results obtained can be markedly influenced by the period of the enrolled literature; consequently, a timely renovation of the literature retrieved is essential for comprehending the research frontier.…”