Arthroscopic treatment of osteoarthritis: a bibliometric study

Osteoarthritis is a common disease among middle-aged and older adults. The arthroscopic approach is among the less traumatic of the treatments and provides quicker recovery. The purpose of this study was to use bibliometrics analysis to clarify the current status and existing problems in the research of the arthroscopic treatment of osteoarthritis.

The Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-E) database in the Web of Science Core Collection (WOSCC) was used as the data source for the literature search. The search terms were "osteoarthritis" and "arthroscopy", with the intersection of the search results of these 2 search terms being used. CiteSpace software used to analyze the final results of the search in the following aspects: annual publication, subject distribution, country/institution distribution, journal distribution, author distribution, and keyword usage. Finally, burst detection was applied to analyze the annual use trend of the keywords.

A total of 2,738 document records were retrieved, and the frequency of citations was 82,932 times. The number of publications and the number of citations showed an obvious annual increasing trend. The country with the highest number of publications and centrality was the United States of America, and most important research institutions were from the United States. Extensive cooperation between countries and institutions was evident. The important journals in this field were mainly professional journals of orthopedics and joints. Keyword analysis showed that early research mainly focused on the technical operation of arthroscopic treatment of osteoarthritis, while the focus in recent years has been on long-term prognosis and risk prediction.

The application of arthroscopy in the treatment for osteoarthritis should be further explored, especially for large joints other than hip and knee joints.