Temporal Trend and Research Focus of Injury Burden from 1998 to 2022: A Bibliometric Analysis

Injury is one of the leading causes of mortality and disability worldwide. It is a major contributor to the overall burden of disease. This study aimed to analyze the temporal trend, research focus and future direction of research related to injury burden.

Publications on injury burden published between January 1998 and September 2022 were extracted from the Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC) through topic advanced search strategy. Microsoft Excel, RStudio, VOSviewer, and CiteSpace were used to extract, integrate, and visualize bibliometric information.

A total of 2916 articles and 783 reviews were identified. The number of publications on injury burden showed a steady upward trend. The United States of America (USA) (n=1628) and the University of Washington (n=1036) were the most productive country and institution. High-income countries started research in this domain earlier, while research in low- and middle-income countries began in recent years. Lancet was the most influential journal. Public, environmental occupational health, general medicine and neurology were the predominant research domains. Based on keyword co-occurrence analysis, the research focus was divided into five clusters: injury epidemiology and prevention, studies related to the global burden of disease (GBD), risk factors for injury, clinical management of injury, and injury outcome assessment and economic burden.

The burden of injury has drawn increasing attention from various perspectives over the years. The research field on injury burden is also becoming more and more extensive. However, there are some gaps among different countries or regions, and more attention needs to be paid to low and middle-income countries.