Research Trends of Patient-Reported Outcome Measures in Orthopedic Medical Practices: A Bibliometric and Visualized Study

Background and Objectives: Patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs), also known as self-report measures, are critical tools for evaluating health outcomes by gathering information directly from patients without external interpretation. There has been a growing trend in the number of publications focusing on PROMs in orthopedic-related research. This study aims to identify the most valuable publications, influential journals, leading researchers, and core countries in this field using bibliometric analysis, providing researchers with an understanding of the current state and future trends of PROMs in orthopedic research. Materials and Methods: All PROMs in orthopedic-related publications from 1991 to 2022 were obtained from the WoSCC database. R software (version 4.2.2), VOSviewer (version 1.6.17), and Microsoft Excel (version 2303) were used for the bibliometric and visual analysis. Results: A total of 2273 publication records were found from 1991 to 2022. The results indicated that the United States (US) has made significant contributions to orthopedic-related PROMs. The majority of active research institutions are located in the US. J ORTHOP RES has published the most articles. J BONE JOINT SURG AM has the highest total citations. Conclusions: Our study provides a valuable reference for further exploration of the application of PROMs in orthopedics. PROMs have emerged as an increasingly popular area of research within the field of orthopedics, both in clinical practice and academic research. We conducted a bibliometric analysis in terms of journals, authors, countries, and institutions in this field. Additionally, we analyzed the potentialities and advantages of using PROMs in orthopedic research. There is an increasing trend towards using network-based or short message service (SMS)-based electronic patient-reported outcome measures (ePROMs) in orthopedic medical practices. It is anticipated that the role of PROMs in psychological and mental health research and telemedicine will continue to grow in importance.