Research progress of breast cancer surgery during 2010-2024: a bibliometric analysis

Abstract

Purpose: This study seeks to systematically analyze the research literature pertaining to breast cancer surgery from 2010 to 2024, as indexed in the PubMed database, employing bibliometric methodologies.

Methods: Employing the "bibliometrix" package in the R programming language, alongside VOSviewer and CiteSpace software, this research conducted a comprehensive visual analysis of 1,195 publications. The analysis encompassed publication trends, collaborative networks, journal evaluation, author and institutional assessments, country-specific analyses, keyword exploration, and the identification of research hotspots.

Results: The study observed a rising trend in the number of publications related to breast cancer surgery. However, there was a concomitant decline in citation rates, potentially indicating either a saturation of the research field or a diminution in research quality. The United States, China, and Japan are the leading contributors to research output, with the United States showing the most extensive international collaboration. The University of California, University of Toronto, and University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center were the top institutions for the number of published papers. Through a comprehensive analysis of keywords, we have identified "breast cancer" "pain" "anxiety" "lymphedema" "mastectomy" and "surgery" as central research themes within this domain, the corresponding clusters were subjected to analysis.

Conclusion: This study provides a comprehensive review of breast cancer surgery research, emphasizing major research areas and proposing future research directions. This study provides a significant resource for researchers and clinicians in the field.

Keywords: bibliometric analysis; breast cancer surgery; international collaboration; publication patterns; research hotspots.

Figure 1

Workflow of the study.

Figure 2

(A) Annual publication trends and average annual citations. (B) Three-field plot, Left field: Author; Middle field: Affiliation; Right field: Source. (C) Bar graph representing the distribution of literature sources. (D) The statistics of the top five journals in terms of cumulative publication volume in different years.

Figure 3

(A) Ten of the most relevant authors. (B) Top 10 authors’ production over time. (C–E) Collaboration network map and density map of the key authors analysis. (C) Collaboration network map. (D) Density map; (E) The number of connections per node in the network.

Figure 4

(A) Top 10 most relevant affiliations. (B) The top 5 affiliations’ production over time.

Figure 5

(A) Ranking of publications in the countries where the corresponding authors are located and the proportion of international cooperation (blue for single-country publications, green for multi-country publications). (B) Country scientific production. (C) Distribution of publications in the top 20 countries. (D) Percentage distribution of publications in the top 20 countries. (E) The number of publications in the top 5 countries by volume and their growth trend. (F) The most influential country in terms of number of citations to its articles.

Figure 6

World map of collaboration between countries.

Figure 7

(A) The top 10 most globally cited documents. (B) Literature co-citation network visualization. (C) Literature co-citation density visualization. (D) The number of connections per node in the network.

Figure 8

(A) World-Cloud for the relevant words. (B) Tree map for the relevant words. (C) Top 10 most frequent words. (D) Change in the frequency of the top 10 keywords over time.

Figure 9

(A) Clustering diagram based on keyword analysis. The size of the circle indicates the number of occurrences of the keyword, and the different colors indicate the diversity of the clusters. (B) Darker areas indicate higher co-occurrence frequencies or stronger relationship densities. (C) The number of connections per node in the network.

Figure 10

Trend topics authors’ keywords.

Figure 11

Thematic map. The horizontal axis represents centrality and indicates how relevant the topic is to the field. The vertical axis represents density, which indicates how developed the topic in the field is. Four quadrants are plotted accordingly: Motor Themes, Niche Themes, Emerging or Declining Themes, Basic Themes.