A bibliometric analysis of metastatic breast cancer: two-decade report (2002-2022)

MBC is a lethal form of breast cancer that arises when cancer cells invade other organs or tissues. The treatment of MBC needs personalized approaches based on the tumor and patient characteristics. The purpose of this paper is to analyze MBC studies from 2002 to 2022 using bibliometrics and to investigate its current situation, main contributors, core journals, highly cited papers, and topic evolution.

We retrieved data from Web of Science Core Collection (WOSCC). Bibliometric analysis of the included literatures mainly used the following tools: the function of "analyze results" and "citation report" in WoS, Microsoft excel 2021, CiteSpace v.6.1. R6, VOSviewer v.1.6.18, BICOMB v.2.04 and gCLUTO v.1.0.

We found 12,653 articles on MBC research published in 1, 802 journals by 69, 753 authors from 118 countries. The annual output and citation of MBC articles showed a rising trend over time. The United States was the most influential country in MBC research. The most cited journal in this field was The Journal of Clinical Oncology. And the most cited article was by Slamon DJ. The co-word analysis of keywords divides MBC into six research clusters. The hormone receptor-positive MBC and liquid biopsy of MBC are the frontiers research trends. "CDK4/6 inhibitor" had the highest burst strength.

Our bibliometric analysis offers a comprehensive overview of MBC research in the past two decades. It shows the current situation, main contributors, core journals, highly cited papers, and topic evolution of this field. Our study can assist researchers and practitioners to comprehend the development and trends of MBC research and to discover potential directions for future research.