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Updated: Jun 29, 2025
Catheter Ablation in Combination With Left Atrial Appendage Closure for Atrial Fibrillation
Published on: February 26, 2013
The progress of percutaneous left atrial appendage occlusion: A bibliometric analysis from 1994 to 2022
Huiqi Zhai1, Liang Kang1, Yihua Li1
1The First Clinical Medical College of Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine, Guangzhou, China.
Insights
This bibliometric analysis reveals a rapid increase in research on left atrial appendage occlusion (LAAO) for atrial fibrillation. Key areas include safety, stroke prevention, and anticoagulation, highlighting future research perspectives.
Area of Science:
- Cardiology
- Medical Research
Background:
- Atrial fibrillation affects 32 million worldwide, necessitating effective treatments like left atrial appendage occlusion (LAAO).
- Decades of atrial fibrillation research exist, but a bibliometric analysis of LAAO is lacking.
Purpose of the Study:
- To conduct a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of global research on left atrial appendage occlusion (LAAO) from 1994 to 2022.
- To explore current research status, identify key contributors, and uncover emerging trends and hotspots in LAAO research.
Main Methods:
- Bibliometric analysis of 1285 publications on LAAO from the Web of Science core collection (1994-2022).
- Utilized tools including VOSviewer, CiteSpace, and R language for data analysis, visualization, and trend identification.
- Examined publication trends, author contributions, country/institution output, journal distribution, citations, and keyword analysis.
Main Results:
- The United States leads in publications, while the United Kingdom leads in citations. Mayo Clinic and Horst Sievert are prominent.
- Keywords analysis identified 'fibrillation', 'stroke', 'safety', 'oral anticoagulants', and 'Watchman' as key research areas.
- Emerging research frontiers include surgical treatment, instrument upgrades, and post-surgical anticoagulation regimens.
Conclusions:
- Research in percutaneous left atrial appendage occlusion (LAAO) has shown significant growth in the past decade.
- This study provides an overview of LAAO research, mapping its landscape and identifying future research directions.
Background:
Atrial fibrillation is the most common cardiac arrhythmia, affecting 32 million individuals worldwide. Although atrial fibrillation has been studied for decades, a comprehensive analysis using bibliometrics has not been performed for atrial fibrillation-left atrial appendage occlusion (LAAO). Therefore, we analyzed the scientific outputs of global LAAO research and explored the current research status and hotpots from 1994 to 2022.
Methods:
We searched the Web of Science core collection for publications related to LAAO that were published between 1994 and 2022. We then performed bibliometric analysis and visualization using Microsoft Excel 2021, Bibliometric (https://bibliometric.com), VOSviewer (version 1.6.19), CiteSpace (version 6.2. R2), and the Bibliometrix 4.0.0 Package (https://www.bibliometrix.org) based on the R language were used to perform the bibliometric analysis, trend and emerging foci of LAAO in the past 29 years, including author, country, institution, journal distribution, article citations, and keywords. In total, we identified 1285 eligible publications in the field of LAAO, with an increasing trend in the annual number of publications.
Results:
The United States is the country with the most published articles in this field, while the United Kingdom is the country with the most cited literature. Mayo Clinic, from the United States, has the most publications in this area and Horst Sievert from Germany had the highest number of individual publications. The analysis of keywords showed that fibrillation, stroke, safety, oral anticoagulants, and watchman were the main hotpots and frontier directions of LAAO. Surgical treatment of nonvalvular atrial fibrillation, upgrading of related surgical instruments, and anticoagulation regimen after surgical treatment are the major research frontiers.
Conclusion:
We show that the research of percutaneous LAAO has been increasing rapidly over the last decade. Our aim was to overview past studies in the field of LAAO, to grasp the frame of LAAO research, and identify new perspectives for future research.
