Global research production in neonatal abstinence syndrome: A bibliometric analysis

Abstract

Background: Recently, neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS) emerged as a significant global concern with a dramatic increase in healthcare expenditures. The incidence of the NAS has increased notably in the past decade and emergence as a global public health problem.

Aim: To evaluate the development and trend of global NAS research from 1958 to 2019 by bibliometric analysis.

Methods: Analyzed aspects included publication output per year, language, document types, journals, countries/territories, h-index, authors, and top research priorities. The VOSviewer was used to determine the top research priorities, and trends, and to present bibliometric networks concerning various dimensions, such as co-authorship, authors, and countries.

Results: A total of 1738 articles were retrieved in the Scopus database from 1958 to 2019. It was found that the great majority of the total NAS documents (n = 1295) were original articles followed by reviews (n = 268) and letters (n = 48). The most productive countries in the NAS field were the United States (n = 833), Canada (n = 112), the United Kingdom (n = 111), and Germany (n = 77). Treatment and hospital outcomes in NAS, evidence-based nurse-driven interventions for the care of newborns with NAS, and a systematic reviews and network meta-analysis for therapeutic approaches of NAS were found in recent years (after 2010), compared with terms such as pathophysiology, mechanisms of NAS, and signs and symptoms in the early years.

Conclusion: Treatment and pediatric outcomes and the effectiveness of pharmacological treatment may be frontiers in the NAS field, and continued efforts from researchers are needed in those topics.

Keywords: Bibliometric; Neonatal abstinence syndrome; Scopus; VOSviewer; Visualization.

Figure 1

Annual number of articles published in neonatal abstinence syndrome.

Figure 2

Network visualization map for countries collaboration among most productive countries. Of the 111 countries, 33 had at least five publications; the largest set of connected countries consists of 28 countries in 8 clusters.

Figure 3

Co-authorship network among most productive authors with the threshold of minimum 5 publications. Of the 5305 authors, 118 had at least five publications; the largest set of connected authors consists of 70 authors in 11 clusters.

Figure 4

Terms co-occurrence network of neonatal abstinence syndrome studies. Of the 27233 terms, 436 terms occurred at least 20 times. For each of the 436 terms, a relevance score was calculated and used to select the 60% most relevant terms. The largest set of connected terms consists of 262 terms in five clusters.

Figure 5

Distribution of terms according to their time of appearance. The blue colored terms mean early appearance and yellow colored terms appeared later.