Characteristics and research status among clinical trials in cardio-oncology by bibliometric and visualized analysis

Abstract

Background: We aim to establish the characteristics of published cardio-oncology research of clinical trials by bibliometric analysis and to talk about the prospects and difficulties facing the development of cardio-oncology.

Methods: Search of data related to clinical trials in cardiac oncology from 1990 to 2022 from the Web of Science core collection. Using CiteSpace to perform co-citation analysis of authors, countries (regions) and institutions, journals and cited journals, cited authors and cited literature, and keywords.

Results: Of the 607 clinical trial studies, the number of papers published per year has increased over time. The regions with the greatest influence were North America (especially the United States) and Europe. Multicenter research has always been the focus of cardio-oncology research, but cross-regional cooperation was still lacking. Myocardial toxicity caused by anthracyclines has received the earliest attention and has been studied for the longest time. Meanwhile, the efficacy and cardiotoxicity of new anticancer drugs always came into focus, but at a slow pace. Few studies on myocardial toxicity were related to the treatment of tumors except breast cancer. Risk factors, heart disease, adverse outcomes, follow-up, and intervention protection were the major hotspots revealed by co-citation cluster.

Conclusions: There is great potential for the development of clinical trials in cardio-oncology, especially in multicenter cooperation across different regions. Expansion of tumor types, myocardial toxicity of different drugs, and effective interventions in the research direction and design of clinical trials are necessary.

Keywords: CiteSpace; bibliometrics; cardiotoxicity; clinical trials; oncology; visual analysis.

FIGURE 1

Number of publications per year and disciplinary distribution. (A) Annual quantitative distribution; (B) disciplinary distribution.

FIGURE 2

National networks and institutional networks of co‐authors for clinical trials of cardiotoxicity in oncology from 1990 to 2022 accessed via CiteSpace. (A) Collaborative country network visualization map (based on co‐author countries) revealed the impact of each node; (B) Visualization of co‐authored institutional networks by degrees of citation; countries and institutions with more than five publications can be seen in the map.

FIGURE 3

Networks of co‐authorship and literature co‐citations. (A) The links between each author represented collaboration (co‐authorship). Individual links between authors indicated collaborations (co‐authors). Node size as a proportion of number of co‐authors of the author. The figure showed author labels that had published more than two studies. (B) A network of reference co‐citations. Round nodes indicated citations; the line between the nodes suggested the frequency with which two references were cited simultaneously.

FIGURE 4

Keyword co‐occurrence and clustering. (A) Network of major keywords for publications about clinical trials of cardiotoxicity in oncology; (B) Chronological view of the top 10 most cited article clusters in the area of cardiotoxicity clinical trials in oncology.

FIGURE 5

Keywords with the strongest article burst intensity on clinical trials of cardiotoxicity in oncology between 1990 and 2022. Keywords highlighted in red indicates a spike in the frequency of use of the keyword over the period. Blue represents a period of comparative decreasing popularity; Year means the first year when keyword was detected from our documents; Strength of each keyword was calculated by the software CiteSpace and the higher the number, the hotter the topic; Begin and end year represents the beginning and end of a popular research discipline.