Advancements and current trends in tumor treating fields: a scientometric analysis

Abstract

Tumor treating fields (TTFields) therapy is a novel and effective non-invasive cancer therapy, and it has been approved by FDA in the treatment of recurrent and newly diagnosed glioblastoma, and malignant pleural mesothelioma. Moreover, TTFields therapy has been widely studied in both clinical trials and preclinical studies in recent years. Based on its high efficacy, research on TTFields therapy has been a hot topic. Thus, we made this scientometric analysis of TTfields to reveal the scientometric distributions such as annual publications and citations, countries and institutions, authors, journals, references, and more importantly, research status and hot topics of the field. In recent years, publication numbers have been stable at high values, and citation numbers have been increasing greatly. The United States and Israel were the top two countries with the highest publication numbers, followed by Germany and Switzerland. Scientometric analyses of keywords indicated that clinical applications and antitumor mechanisms are probably the two main parts of current research on TTfields. Most clinical trials of TTfields focus on the treatment of glioblastoma. And a variety of other cancers such as lung cancer especially non-small cell lung cancer, hepatic cancer, other brain tumors, etc. have also been studied in both clinical trials and preclinical studies.