Background: Due to the significant increase in cesarean section rates worldwide, cesarean scar pregnancy (CSP) has attracted extensive attention. This study aimed to investigate the global research status and developmental directions of CSP to discern promising research hotspots by means of bibliometrics and visualized analyses.
Methods: The English CSP-related literature from 2001 to 2020 was retrieved from The Web of Science Core Collection (WOSCC) database. Microsoft Excel 2019 was used to analyze the years, countries, institutions, journals, authors, citations, H indices, titles, abstracts, and keywords of related literature, and VOSviewer software was used to visualize developmental directions and promising hotspots in CSP.
Results: The study included 1,186 articles in total. The number of CSP articles has presented an overall increasing trend over the last two decades. China has the maximum number of publications, but America's H-index is higher than that of China, with the average number of citations per item ranking fourth. The Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Research published the most on the subject, while Zhejiang University from China published the largest number of articles; Jurkovic D, Timor-Tritsch IE, and Monteagudo A have achieved considerable progress in the CSP domain. There are 5 clusters that the current research orientation can fall into: "selection of the delivery mode with a scarred uterus after cesarean section", "risk factors", "diagnosis", "treatment" and "related basic and clinical experiments". High-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) and the formulation of consensus guidelines are the focus of the current research.
Conclusions: The analysis of global trends shows that CSP research is being actively studied and that the number of published studies is continuously increasing. According to the comprehensive quality and quantity of the literature, the United States maintains a leading position in CSP research. In recent years, the research directions have mainly focused on "diagnosis", "treatment" and "risk factors", while HIFU and the formulation of consensus guidelines may become research hotspots in the field of CSP.
Keywords: Bibliometric analysis; VOSviewer; cesarean scar pregnancy (CSP); hotspots; research status.