Mapping the field of spondylolisthesis: A bibliometric analysis

In recent years, the number of studies on spondylolisthesis has been increasing, and there are many publications on this disorder. To our knowledge, there is no bibliometric analysis of spondylolisthesis to date.

To investigate emerging directions in Spondylolisthesis research and systematically evaluate the academic literature with the highest citation impact within this field.

All data were collected from the Web of Science Core Collection database. Years of publications, countries, journals, institutions and total number of citations were extracted and analyzed by VOSviewer software. In addition, we analyzed the top 100 most-cited articles on spondylolisthesis.

A total of 1831 articles related to spondylolisthesis were identified. The frequency of publications on spondylolisthesis has increased dramatically over time. Among all countries, United States has contributed the most publications on spondylolisthesis (n = 574). The institution with the most articles was the University of California, San Francisco (n = 52). Spine topped the list of journals and has published 291 spondylolisthesis-related reports. The hotspot of research changed from posterolateral fusion to interbody fusion.

In recent years, academic investigations on spondylolisthesis have exhibited significant growth. As the inaugural bibliometric evaluation in this domain, our research establishes a methodological framework for synthesizing the historical progression and current advancements of spondylolisthesis studies.