Bibliometric analysis of neurocysticercosis case reports and evaluation of presented cases

Neurocysticercosis (NCC) has been classified as a neglected tropical disease by the World Health Organization (WHO), with the condition being regarded as the most significant parasitic disease affecting the nervous system. Hence, the aim of this study was to conduct a review of previously published case reports on this topic in order to ascertain whether there is an increasing trend of NCC worldwide and evaluate the cases that have been presented. After a comprehensive search of the Web of Science Core Collection using the keywords "neurocysticercosis" and "case reports", studies were selected by applying inclusion criteria. Important data attributes that were extracted in plain text format included the document titles, publication years, journal names, author(s) name(s), keywords, institutions, and countries. In addition, to evaluate the cases, the age and gender of the patients, complaints on admission, localization of the cyst, and treatment procedure used were recorded in an Excel file. The bibliometric analysis was conducted using Biblioshiny. Additionally, GraphPad and Excel were employed for the creation of graphical representations. The dataset analyzed included 297 documents, 162 from various sources, with an average age of 12.2 years and 6.3 citations per document. The number of case reports tended to increase over the years. India and the USA were the leading contributors to NCC case reports, with 78 (26.3 %) and 64 (21.5 %), respectively. This was followed by Brazil, France, and Spain with 31 (10.4 %), 14 (4.7 %) and 13 (4.4 %) case reports, respectively. Moreover 55.5 % of the patients in the cases presented in the articles were male and 12.9 % were in the 21-25 age group. In regard to the cysts, 81.2 % were located in the brain and 15.1 % were in the spine. The most common complaints were headache and seizures in brain localized NCC cases and back pain and numbness or weakness in extremities in spine localized NCC cases. Albendazole was used in 174 (54.5 %) cases, praziquantel in 22 (6.9 %) cases, and ivermectin in five (1.6 %) cases. In conclusion, NCC continues to be an increasingly serious public health problem in India as well as developed countries such as the USA and European countries. NCC can be seen in all age groups, males are more susceptible than females, cysts are more localized in the ventricular system, and albendazole and/or paraziquentel are used in treatment. In addition, more comprehensive studies on the use of ivermectin in the treatment of NCC should be conducted, as success was achieved in cases where ivermectin was used in treatment.