Global research status of pathological scar reported over the period 2001-2021: A 20-year bibliometric analysis

Abstract

Pathological scar is a classic problem in plastic and reconstructive surgery. Although the researches on pathological scar have been conducted for decades, the way to go to address this thorny problem still remains challenging. To the best of our knowledge, few bibliometric analysis concerning pathological scar have been reported. In this study, we set out to employ bibliometric and visual analysis to offer research status and trends of pathological scar over the period 2001-2021. All publications covering pathological scar during 2001-2021 were retrieved and extracted from the Web of Science database. We applied VOSviewer software to evaluate the keywords and research hotpots, and the online tool (http://bibliometric.com/) was used to carried out the publication trends analysis. A total of 2221 pathological scar-related articles were identified over the period 2001-2021. China is the country which had the largest volume of publications (819, 36.87%), followed by the United States (416, 18.73%), Japan (144, 6.48%), Korea (142, 6.39%), and England (118, 5.31%). Among the institutions and journals, Shanghai Jiao Tong University (167) and Wound Repair and Regeneration (85) accounted for the most papers related to pathological scar, respectively. Professor Bayat A, who had the most citation frequency (2303), made great contribution in pathological scar field. "Fibroblast", "expression", and "proliferation" were identified as the pathological scar research hotspot through analysis of the keywords. In terms of publication, China ranked first all over the world, but the numbers of publication are inconsistent with the citation frequency, ranking first and second, respectively. Shanghai Jiao Tong University and journal Wound Repair and Regeneration stand for the highest level of research in this field to a certain extent. In the early stage, the research focus was mainly on the prevention, treatment, and risk factors for recurrence of pathological scar from cases. In the later stage, the research focus was on the comprehensive management, in which the mechanism research was in-depth to the molecular and gene level.

Keywords: bibliometric analysis; hypertrophic scar; keloid; keywords; pathological scar; research hotspots.