Strategies for Prevention and Treatment of Peritoneal Fibrosis: A Scientometric Study

BACKGROUND: Interest in using peritoneal dialysis (PD) shows global and national increase. However, it remains a challenge to prevent the progression of PD-associated fibrosis in clinical practice. Here, we assessed the status of scientific publications in prevention and management of PD-associated fibrosis in a scientometric study. METHODS: We retrieved the bibliometric data by search terms “encapsulating peritoneal fibrosis,” “treatment or prevention,” and their synonyms in the Scopus databases until December 2, 2017. Data were analyzed using Scopus analysis tools, SPSS version 15 and Visualizing Scientific Landscapes viewer version 1.6.5. RESULTS: Number of publications showed a steady significant increase (P < 0.001) reaching to 390 documents. Japan had the highest share (21.3%) followed by United Kingdom. Coauthorship network assessment assigned “Ikeda M.” from Japan as the top author. The top source of documents was “Peritoneal Dialysis International.” Most of documents were original articles focusing on prevention and management of malignant fibrosis of peritoneum (72.6%). The documents were cited totally 5636 times with average citations per article of 14.45, and relatively high H-index of 38. CONCLUSIONS: Despite the global increasing trend in scientific output in this field, contribution of our country is very small. Perhaps more national and international collaboration is required to encourage our researchers for producing more scientific products.