Research progress of pre-hospital emergency during 2000-2020: a bibliometric analysis

Li Xu; Fen Tang; Yunyun Wang; Qi Cai; Shuhui Tang; Demeng Xia; Xianghua Xu; Xiaoying Lu

Research progress of pre-hospital emergency during 2000-2020: a bibliometric analysis

Am J Transl Res. 2021 Mar 15;13(3):1109-1124. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Li Xu¹, Fen Tang², Yunyun Wang³, Qi Cai⁴, Shuhui Tang⁵, Demeng Xia¹, Xianghua Xu⁶, Xiaoying Lu⁷

Affiliations

¹ Department of Emergency, Changhai Hospital, Naval Medical University Shanghai, China.
² Shanghai Key Lab of Tuberculosis, Shanghai Pulmonary Hospital, Tongji University School of Medicine Shanghai, China.
³ Department of Emergency Intensive Care Unit, The Affiliated Hospital of Qingdao University Qingdao, Shandong, China.
⁴ Department of Stomatology, Changhai Hospital, Naval Medical University Shanghai, China.
⁵ Department of Oncology, Changhai Hospital, Naval Medical University Shanghai, China.
⁶ Department of Respiratory Medicine, Northern Theater General Hospital Liaoning, China.
⁷ Department of Nursing, Changhai Hospital, Naval Medical University Shanghai, China.

PMID: 33841643
PMCID: PMC8014387

Abstract

Background: The past decade has witnessed the preliminary development of pre-hospital emergency. We analyzed the scientific output related to pre-hospital emergency in the past two decades, aiming to evaluate the publication status of the literature related to pre-hospital emergency through bibliometrics analysis, and hope to provide enlightenment of trends and hotspots for the development of pre-hospital emergency.

Method: By web of science, all literature on pre-hospital emergency from 2000 to 2 October 2020 was retrieved and screened by two researchers. Excel, Social Sciences Statistics Package (SPSS, version 24) and software GraphPad Prism 8 were used to analyze the publication trend in related fields. Besides, VOSviewer, Citespace were also applied to visualize the research trends and study the co-occurring keywords in pre-hospital emergency.

Results: As of 2 October 2020, a total of 1839 pre-hospital emergency publications with total citation of 32800 times were identified. The United States accounted for the largest number of publications (36.7%) and the highest number of citations (12825), but its H-index was fourth (20.17). In the aspects of journals and articles, Prehospital Emergency Care is the most published journal in pre-hospital emergency (256), while the articles from Smith K presented the highest citation frequency (751). We can also obtain the information that the overall trend is upward, and developed countries contribute most. "Complications" is a hot research field in intensive care. In the identification research cluster, "acute ischemic stroke" was determined to be the hotspot, while "secondary outcome" was the new trend in the first-aid cluster. As for the management, "embase" was noted as new topics.

Conclusion: In the past decade, researches on pre-hospital emergency has increased rapidly. However, the related articles were mainly published in developed countries, the United States has absolute advantages especially. Moreover, first-aid studies may become hotspots in the near future.

Keywords: Pre-hospital; bibliometrics; citation; emergency.