A comprehensive overview of clinical research on dexmedetomidine in the past 2 decades: A bibliometric analysis

Abstract

Introduction: Dexmedetomidine is a potent, highly selective α-2 adrenoceptor agonist with sedative, analgesic, anxiolytic, and opioid-sparing properties. A large number of dexmedetomidine-related publications have sprung out in the last 2 decades. However, no bibliometric analysis for clinical research on dexmedetomidine has been published to analyze hot spots, trends, and frontiers in this field. Methods: The clinical articles and reviews related to dexmedetomidine, published from 2002 to 2021 in the Web of Science Core Collection, were retrieved on 19 May 2022, using relevant search terms. VOSviewer and CiteSpace were used to conduct this bibliometric study. Results: The results showed that a total of 2,299 publications were retrieved from 656 academic journals with 48,549 co-cited references by 2,335 institutions from 65 countries/regions. The United States had the most publications among all the countries (n = 870, 37.8%) and the Harvard University contributed the most among all institutions (n = 57, 2.48%). The most productive academic journal on dexmedetomidine was Pediatric Anesthesia and the first co-cited journal was Anesthesiology. Mika Scheinin is the most productive author and Pratik P Pandharipande is the most co-cited author. Co-cited reference analysis and keyword analysis illustrated hot spots in the dexmedetomidine field including pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics, intensive care unit sedation and outcome, pain management and nerve block, and premedication and use in children. The effect of dexmedetomidine sedation on the outcomes of critically ill patients, the analgesic effect of dexmedetomidine, and its organ protective property are the frontiers in future research. Conclusion: This bibliometric analysis provided us with concise information about the development trend and provided an important reference for researchers to guide future research.

Keywords: Citespace; VOSviewer; bibliometric study; dexmedetomidine; sedation.

FIGURE 1

Timeline of publications and TGCS on dexmedetomidine. (TGCS refers to the total number of citations of all dexmedetomidine-related clinical publications in a certain year retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection database). TGCS, total global citation score.

FIGURE 2

Academic collaboration between different countries/regions, institutions, journals, and authors in the dexmedetomidine research area. (A) Collaboration between different countries/regions (Threshold = 1) (B) Collaboration between different institutions (Threshold = 15) (C) Collaboration between different journals (Threshold = 13) (D) Collaboration between different co-cited journals (Threshold = 350) (E) Collaboration between different authors (Threshold = 5) (F) Collaboration between different co-cited authors (Threshold = 109).

FIGURE 3

Co-cited references analysis. (A) The overall display diagram of the co-cited references. (The size of the nodes represents the co-cited times of one reference. Time is reflected by different colors: light gray refers to 2002 and red refers to 2021. The nodes with purple around refer to references with high centrality) (B) Cluster diagram of co-cited references (All the references belonging to one cluster are covered by regions with different colors. The top three most co-cited references were marked in each cluster.)

FIGURE 4

The top 25 references with the strongest citation bursts from 2002 to 2021.

FIGURE 5

Keywords analysis. (A) The cluster analysis of the top 50 keywords with the highest occurrence frequencies in the dexmedetomidine area, 2002–2021 (B) The burst detection of keywords of dexmedetomidine area in chronological order, 2002–2021.

FIGURE 6

Timeline view of keywords analysis (Hot spots of one cluster were reflected by the nodes in the timeline. Clusters with more large nodes reflected the hot field of dexmedetomidine).