The relationship between anal disease and quality of life: a bibliometric study

BACKGROUND: Anal disease has a significant impact on patients’ quality of life (QoL), and surgical treatment may further diminish QoL. The purpose of this study was to conduct bibliometric analysis to investigate the profile of studies on anorectal disease-related QoL. METHODS: The database of Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-E) in Web of Science Core Collection (WOSCC) was searched. The search terms were “anal diseases” and “quality of life”. The bibliometrix package of R software was used to analyze the literature on anorectal diseases and QoL. The content of the analysis included the following: the number of papers published in this field by each country, the cooperation relationship between countries, the number of papers published by institutions, the cooperation relationship between institutions, the number of papers published by researchers, the cooperation relationship between researchers, the citations of researchers, the number of articles published in journals, and the use of keywords. RESULTS: A total of 1,130 related research literature records were retrieved in this study. An annually increasing trend was detected in the number of published papers and the number of citations. Developed countries in Europe and America, mainly the United States, the United Kingdom (UK), and Germany, were in a leading position in this field. The Cleveland Clinic Foundation and Mayo Clinic in the United States, St. Mark’s Hospital in the UK, and the University of Toronto in Canada were the leading research institutions in this field. The top 3 researchers with the most published papers were Feza H. Remzi, Bo Shen, and Victor W. Fazio. Collaboration among researchers was clustered. There were more high-quality related articles in professional journals of anal diseases. The use of keywords suggested a temporal change in research focus, but randomized controlled studies were found to be lacking. CONCLUSIONS: Asian countries should participate in more collaborative research projects in the field of anorectal disease, and more randomized controlled studies should be conducted overall.