Emerging Trends and Research Hotspots of Remote Ischemic Preconditioning in Cardiac Surgery: A Bibliometric Analysis

Remote ischemic preconditioning (RIPC) is a key area in cardiovascular research, but inconsistent findings have made it hard to fully understand. Bibliometrics, using mathematics and statistics, can track trends and progress in research over time. This study uses bibliometrics to assess RIPC trends and hotspots in cardiac surgery, aiming to better understand future research.

Studies on RIPC were retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection, with 104 studies included contributing countries, collaborative countries, institutions, authors, journals, keywords, research topics, citation patterns, and the current state of research. in this field were visually analyzed by using R platform, VOS viewer, and Microsoft Excel. These publications mainly came from 29 countries and 65 institutions. All experiments were clinical studies, and the type of surgery involved was cardiac surgery. A significant percentage of publications occurred during the period from 2010 to 2020 (75; 72.11%). Germany made the most significant contribution to this field with 27 (25.96%) papers and had the highest total citation count (2314). J Thorac Cardiovasc Surg published the most studies (n = 6), followed by Basic Res Cardiol (n = 5). We identified 89 authors, among which Patrick Meybohm, Juergen Peters, and Matthias Thielmann had the most studies (n = 10).

RIPC has significant research value and potential in cardiac surgery, mainly focusing on organ protection during adult heart surgeries, especially myocardial protection. Although Germany and China are leading, more international cooperation is needed. Large-scale, standardized randomized controlled trials on RIPC are essential to provide higher-level evidence-based medical research.