Global Tendencies and Frontier Topics in Cervical Laminoplasty: A Bibliometric Analysis from 1982 to 2023

This bibliometric analysis aimed to map the knowledge network of laminoplasty research.

Studies on laminoplasty published from 1982 to 2023 were retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC). The contributions of countries, institutions, authors, and journals were identified using VOSviewer, Scimago Graphica, and Microsoft Excel. Tendencies, hotspots, and knowledge networks were analyzed and visualized using VOSviewer and CiteSpace.

We identified 2577 publications on laminoplasty. The annual number of publications exhibited an overall increasing trend since 2004. Among these, Japan, China, and the United States were the 3 major contributing countries. Keio University, Nagoya University, and Tokyo Medical & Dental University were the 3 most productive institutions. Shiro Imagama ranked first among authors regarding the number of articles, while K Hirabayashi was first among co-cited authors. Spine was the top journal in terms of the number of publications, citations, and co-citations. In addition, the research topics can be divided into 3 clusters: (1) Comparison between laminoplasty and other surgery in outcomes and complications; (2) Axial symptoms in laminoplasty; (3) Sagittal alignment and sagittal balance in laminoplasty. Emerging topics sagittal alignment and sagittal balance in degenerative cervical spondylosis are identified as current research frontiers.

This study drew a knowledge map of the top countries, institutions, authors, publications, and journals on laminoplasty over the past 4 decades. The current and future hotspots of laminoplasty focus on sagittal balance, comparison between other surgery in outcomes and complication, and axial symptoms in laminoplasty.