Bibliometric Analysis of Research Studies on Postoperative Pain Management of Cesarean Section

PURPOSE: Cesarean section (C-section) is associated with moderate-to-severe postoperative pain. Many studies on pain management after C-section have been published in recent decades, many of which focused on new regional techniques. The purpose of this study is to outline the connections within the dynamic evolution of postcesarean delivery analgesia research publications using retrospective bibliometric analysis. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Published studies on postoperative pain management of C-section were retrieved from the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-E) of Web of Science (WOS) Core collection database. All papers published from 1978 to October 22, 2022 were searched. The research progress and growing trend were quantitatively analyzed by total publications, research institutions, journal impact factors, and author’s contribution. Total citations frequency, average citations per item and h-index were used for evaluating literature quantity. Top 20 journals with the highest number of publications were charted. The keywords co-occurrence overlay map was visualized by the VOSviewer software. RESULTS: From 1978 to 2022, a total of 1032 articles in postcesarean delivery analgesia research field were published, with 23,813 times cited, average citations of 23.07 per item, and an h-index of 68. The most high-yield publication year, countries, journals, authors, institutions were 2020 (n=79), the United States (n=288), Anesthesia and Analgesia (n=108), Carvalho B (n=25), and Stanford University (n=33), respectively. The United States had the most cited papers. The future research interest might be “prescription”, “quadratus lumborum block”, “postnatal depression”, “persistent pain”, “dexmedetomidine”, “enhanced recovery”, and “multimodal analgesia”. CONCLUSION: By employing the online bibliometric tool and VOSviewer software, we found that studies on postcesarean analgesia had grown markedly. The focus had evolved to nerve block, postnatal depression, persistent pain, and enhanced recovery.