Bibliometric Study of Pain after Spinal Cord Injury

BACKGROUND: The prevalence of comorbid pain after spinal cord injury (SCI) is relatively high in clinical observations and has continued to increase over time. Neuropathic pain (70.14%) is the most popular subject in academic journals after SCI. However, studies that used the bibliometric method to analyze comorbid pain after SCI are still lacking. This study is aimed at combining and integrating acquired information to analyze the global trends of research on the comorbidity of pain after SCI in the last three decades (1990–2019). METHODS: Systematic works of literature published from 1990 to 2019 were obtained from the Web of Science Core Collection. CiteSpace software was used to analyze the relationship of publication year with the country, institution, journals, authors, references, and keywords. The regression analysis is used to evaluate the percentage of the category increase or decrease over time significantly. IBM SPSS Statistics was used in the statistical analysis. RESULTS: A total of 730 publications were included in the analysis. A remarkable increase in the number of publications was observed in the study period (P < 0.05). A total of 202 academic journals focused on the categories of clinical neurology, neurosciences, and rehabilitation, and the annual growth rate of articles in these three categories was statistically significant (P < 0.05). The USA (356, 48.77%) and the University of Miami (64, 8.77%) were the country and institution with the highest number of publications, respectively. Spinal Cord, which was the main journal for research on pain after SCI, had the most publications (88, 12.05%). Burst keywords showed that the individual, inflammation, and central sensitization with pain after SCI are the research development trends and focus in this research field. CONCLUSIONS: Overall, this study provides the latest research direction for pain after SCI. This historical overview of research into pain after SCI will be a useful basis for further research into development trends, focus issues, cooperators, and cooperative institutions.