Bibliometric Analysis of Pediatric Liver Transplantation Research in PubMed from 2014 to 2018

BACKGROUND: Pediatric liver transplantation is used to treat children with end-stage liver disease. This study explored the research hotspots and bibliometric characteristics of pediatric liver transplantation through a variety of bibliometric analysis software. We conducted hotspot analysis to help determine important directions for future scientific research. MATERIAL/METHODS: The study samples were articles related to pediatric liver transplantation published in PubMed in the past 5 years. The high-frequency keywords are extracted by BICOMB software, and then a binary matrix and a common word matrix were constructed. Gcluto software was used to perform double-clustering and visual analysis on high-frequency words, and then we obtained hot area classification. Strategic coordinates are constructed using Excel. Citespace and VOSviewer software are used for further analysis and bibliometric data visualization. RESULTS: A total of 36 high-frequency words were found in the 4118 studies. A peak map was drawn through double-cluster analysis. Biclustering analysis was used to calculate the concentricity and density of each hotspot. We obtained the top 10 countries/regions engaged in pediatric liver transplantation research. VOSviewer was used to visualize the co-author map. CONCLUSIONS: We found 5 clusters and 7 aspects for pediatric liver transplantation. Additionally, calculation results showed that post-transplant lymphoproliferative disorder in pediatric patients and outcomes of multivisceral transplantation seem very promising. This conclusion is of great value for future exploratory research.