A bibliometric analysis and visualization of photothermal therapy on cancer

BACKGROUND: Cancer is one of the most lethal diseases in the world, and photothermal therapy was reported recently as a new and effective therapy for cancer. This study offers the bibliometric and visualization analysis of photothermal therapy on cancer. METHODS: A record of 6,233 papers in this field from 1995 to 2019 was obtained based on the Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC). And CiteSpace was used to analyze the annual trends of publications, countries, institutions, journals, co-cited references, and keywords in the field of photothermal therapy on cancer. RESULTS: We identified that the number of publications continually increased over the time. The most productive country and institution in this field was China and Chinese Academy of Sciences, respectively. The ACS Appl Mater Interfaces was the most active journal. Co-cited references analysis revealed the top landmark articles in the field. Co-occurrence keywords and their clustered network were analyzed, revealing that materials, especially nanomaterials, used in photothermal therapy, remained the hotspots in this research field. Timezone view and burst detection of keywords showed that nanomaterials were always the hotspots and the frontier topics in this field. CONCLUSIONS: The current study revealed that photothermal therapy has become a subject of growing study and a very important research area. In addition, the research of materials in photothermal therapy, especially nanomaterials, which were applied in photothermal therapy to treat cancer effectively, is the foci and the frontier topic in this field.