Research Trends of Acupuncture Therapy on Cancer Over the Past Two Decades: A Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract

Purpose: Acupuncture has been used for managing cancer-related symptoms. However, there are still few studies concerning the overall trends in acupuncture therapy on cancer based on bibliometric analysis. This study aims to demonstrate the current status and trends in this field over the past 2 decades.

Methods: Articles were retrieved from the Web of Science from 2000 to 2019. CiteSpace was used for co-authorship network of countries/institutions, dual-map analysis, and detecting the keywords with citation bursts. VOSviewer was used to construct networks based on co-authorship and co-citation analysis of authors, and co-occurrence of keywords.

Results: A total of 927 articles and reviews were included in the final analysis. The number of publications has steadily increased with some fluctuations among years. The country and institution contributing most to this field are the USA and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Mao JJ was the most productive author and Molassiotis A ranked first in the cited authors. The co-occurrence analysis revealed 5 clusters (including "clinical trials," "clinical studies on chemotherapy/radiation-induced symptoms," "CAM therapy for cancer," "clinical studies on vasomotor symptoms," and "systematic reviews"). Most recent keyword bursts were "neuropathic pain," "arthralgia," "prevention," "supportive care," and "integrative medicine".

Conclusions: The annual publication output would increase rapidly in the next decade, which shows a promising future in this research field. Future research hotspots would focus on the role of acupuncture in neuropathic pain, arthralgia, prevention, supportive care, and integrative medicine.

Keywords: CiteSpace; VOSviewer; acupuncture therapy; bibliometric analysis; cancer.

Figure 1.

Global trends in publications about acupuncture therapy on cancer. (A) The single-year publication numbers over the past 20 years. (B) Model fitting curves of growth trends in publications and prediction of future publication numbers.

Figure 2.

(A) A network map of co-authorship between countries/territories engaged in acupuncture therapy on cancer. (B) A network map of co-authorship between institutions. In the network map, a point represents a country/territory/institution and a line between 2 points represents the cooperation relationship. A wider line indicates a stronger relationship.

Figure 3.

A network map of co-cited journals with more than 80 publications.

Figure 4.

A dual-map overlay of journals related to acupuncture therapy on cancer.

Figure 5.

(A) A network map of co-authorship between authors with more than 5 publications. (B) Co-authorship between 31 authors that were connected to each other. Dots represented authors and larger dot indicated a higher number of publications, the links represented author collaborations. (C) A network map of co-citation between authors with more than 50 publications.

Figure 6.

Analysis of keywords. (A) Mapping of keywords of studies (categorized into 5 clusters). (B) Distribution of keywords according to average publication year (blue: earlier, yellow: later).

Figure 7.

Top 35 keywords with the strongest citation bursts. The red bars mean the keywords occurred frequently; the green bars mean the keywords occurred infrequently. A greater strength indicates a higher frequency of occurrence.