Global research status of anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction: a bibliometric analysis

The aim of this study is to comprehensively analyze the publications of anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction (ACLR) research and display the current research status in this field.

Articles regarding ACLR research published before October 7, 2021, were downloaded from the Web of Science Core Collection. Excel 2016 and Bibliometric website were used to analyze the annual article trends and international cooperation network. CiteSpace V and VOSviewer were used to perform co-occurrence and citation analyses for journals, institutions, authors, cocitation authors and keywords. Burst keyword detection was also performed with CiteSpace V.

A total of 12 223 ACLR articles were identified. The American Journal of Sports Medicine (1636 publications, 92,310 citations), the Pennsylvania Commonwealth System of Higher Education (624 publications, 25,304 citations) and Freddie H. Fu (321 publications, 15,245 citations) were journals, institutions and authors with the most publications and citations, respectively. Patellar tendon was the keyword with the most occurrences (1618 times) and return to sport was the keyword with the most burst strength (burst strength: 46.99).

ACLR-related publications showed a rapid increasing trend since 1990. A large number of articles have been published by authors from different institutions and countries, some of which have gained great academic influence. Based on keyword analysis, patellar tendon is identified as the research hotspot and return to sport is identified as the current research frontier.