Bibliometric and visualized analysis of scientific publications on rehabilitation of rotator cuff injury based on web of science

Abstract

Background: Since the discovery of rehabilitation as an intervention for rotator cuff injury, its impact on the recovery of rotator cuff injury has attracted crucial attention, and the number of related studies is increasing worldwide. There were no bibliometric and visualized analysis studies in this field. This study aimed to investigate the research hotpots and trends in the rehabilitation of rotator cuff injury via bibliometric and visualized analysis and to identify the future development of clinical practice.

Method: The publications regarding rehabilitation of rotator cuff injury from inception to December 2021 were obtained from the Web of Science Core Collection database. The trends of publications, co-authorship and co-occurrence analysis and visualized analysis were carried out using Citespace, VOSviewer, Scimago Graphica software, and R Project.

Results: A total of 795 publications were included in this study. The number of publications significantly increased yearly. The United States published the highest number of related papers and the papers published by the United States had the highest citations. The University of Laval, the University of Montreal and Keele University were the top 3 most contributive institutions. Additionally, the Journal of Shoulder and Elbow Surgery was the journal with the highest number of publications. The most common keywords were "rotator cuff", "rehabilitation", "physical therapy", "management", and "telerehabilitation".

Conclusion: The total number of publications has shown a steady upward trend. The cooperation between countries globally was still relatively lacking, and therefore it is necessary to strengthen cooperation between different countries and regions to provide conditions for multi-center, large sample, and high-quality research. In addition to the relatively mature rehabilitation of rotator cuff injury such as passive motion or exercise therapy, telerehabilitation has also attracted much attention with the progress of science.

Keywords: bibliometric analysis; physical therapy; rehabilitation; rotator cuff injury; visualized analysis.

Figure 1

The flowchart of literature selection.

Figure 2

The trend of publication outputs from 1991 to 2021 on the rehabilitation of rotator cuff injury.

Figure 3

The information on contributive countries of the rehabilitation of rotator cuff injury. (A) The geographical visualized map of countries. (B) The number of publications, total citations and citations per year in the top 10 countries. (C) The heatmap of country distribution over time from 1992 to 2022. (D) The cooperative network visualized map of countries.

Figure 4

The information on contributive institutions of the rehabilitation of rotator cuff injury. (A) The number of publications, total citations and citations per year in the top 10 institutions. (B) The co-network visualized map of institutions.

Figure 5

The related information of journals on the rehabilitation of rotator cuff injury. (A) The Bradford's Law for journals. (B) The citation network of journals.

Figure 6

The top 10 authors and cooperative network on rehabilitation of rotator cuff injury. (A) The top-10 authors' production over time. (B) The three-dimensional plots over the authors, affiliations and research directions. (C) The co-network visualized map of authors.

Figure 7

Bibliometric analysis of keywords. (A) The heatmap of keywords distribution over time from 1992 to 2022. (B) The co-occurrence network map of keywords. (C) The co-occurrence cluster map of keywords. (D) The top 20 keywords with the strongest citation bursts.