Global research trends in spinal ultrasound: a systematic bibliometric analysis

BACKGROUND: In recent years, there has been increased interest in the use of ultrasound technology in the evaluation of spinal and paraspinal regions. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to investigate trends in spinal ultrasound research from 1994 to 2015 and compare the contributions of such research from different countries and authors. STUDY DESIGN: Bibliometric analysis. SETTING: Publications related to spinal ultrasound from 1994 to 2015 were retrieved from the Web of Science database. METHODS: Excel 2013, GraphPad Prism 5, and VOSviewer were used to summarise bibliometric features, including the number of publications, citation frequency, H-index, and country contributions and hotspots (keywords of popular scientific fields). RESULTS: A total of 3859 papers were included. The global inflection point (the point in time when the publication growth rate moved from positive to negative) came in 2010. The United States contributed the largest percentage of articles (1041; 26.9%), with the most citations (19 848) and the highest H-index (61). The journals Osteoporosis International and Spine had the highest publication number. The University of Toronto and the University of California, San Francisco were the most contributive institutions. Studies could be divided into three clusters: surgery, osteoporosis, and others. The keywords ‘adolescent idiopathic scoliosis’ and ‘anaesthesia’ were the latest hotspots, appearing around 2012. CONCLUSION: Spinal ultrasound literature has grown continuously over the last 22 years, with the rate slowing down after 2010. The United States was the largest contributor in this field. Recent studies on topics related to ‘adolescent idiopathic scoliosis’ and ‘anaesthesia’ were relatively new and should be closely followed in spinal ultrasound research.