Research trends of acupuncture therapy on dysmenorrhea from 2002 to 2022: A bibliometric analysis

This research wasdesigned to provide a visual analysis of the current status, hotspots, and trends of global acupuncture for dysmenorrhea over the past 2 decades. The literature about acupuncture for dysmenorrhea from the Web of Science Core Collection database. Cite Space (5.6.R3) was used to analyze the volume of publications, journals, authors, cited journals, cited authors, countries, cited references, institutions, and keywords by using standard bibliometric measures. The most productive countries and institutions in this area were China (79) and BeijingUniversity of Chinese Medicine (24). The Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine was the most published journal (29) and also had the highest number of citations (80). The article by Woo HL (2018) (number of citations: 13) and the article by (centrality: 0.38) were the most representative references. JiangZhu (17) was the most productive author and Dawood MY (47) was the top cited author. The number one keyword in terms of frequency and centrality was 'primary dysmenorrhea", and the leading hotspot from 2002 to 2022 was "Functional connectivity". The three forefront topics were "prevalence", "impact"and "point'. This research is thefirst bibliometric analysis of the current situation and new trends about acupuncture for dysmenorrhea in the past 20 years using CiteSpace. It offered some information on acupuncture for dysmenorrhea and valuable information for researchers to identify prospective collaborators, partner institutions, popular topics, and research frontiers.