Global trend of review articles focused on cardiopulmonary bypass: Perspectives from bibliometrics

Cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) is a life-support technology widely used in surgery. Review articles reflect research advances in a certain topic or field within a certain period of time.

To perform a bibliometric analysis of the review articles that focused on CPB for cardiovascular surgery.

This study was based on a bibliometric analysis. Data were acquired from the Web of Science and basic bibliometric parameters were analyzed and visualized using VOSviewer and Excel.

We identified 141 review articles on CPB. Generally, the number of publications increased, and most of them were published in the 2010s (n = 57, 40.4%) and the 2020s (n = 45, 31.9%). There were 113 (80.1%) narrative review articles, 21 (14.9%) meta-analysis studies and 7 (5.0%) systematic review papers. The United States (n = 25, 17.7%) and China (n = 21, 14.9%) were the leading countries in terms of publication number. The articles were published in 98 different journals. The Journal of Cardiothoracic and Vascular Anesthesia (n = 14, 10.0%) and Perfusion-United Kingdom (n = 11, 7.8%) were preferred by the authors. The high-frequency keywords included inflammatory response, children, acute kidney injury, meta-analysis and off-pump, except for CPB and cardiac surgery. Inflammatory response had the closest relationship with CPB during cardiac surgery. The complications of CPB, including inflammatory response, kidney injury and ischemia, caught lots of concern.

The rapid increase of review papers shows that the research on CPB in cardiac surgery is increasingly being emphasized by scholars and clinical staff worldwide. Meta-analysis has been widely conducted to analyze clinical controversies and further guide clinical practice. Strategies to improving the outcomes of patients undergoing cardiac surgery with CPB are the hot spots in this field.