The research landscape and evolutionary trends of robot-assisted orthopedic telesurgery: a bibliometric and...

This study employed bibliometric methodologies to systematically investigate the research landscape and evolutionary trajectory of robot-assisted orthopedic telesurgery (RAOTS) from 2010 to 2025. A visual analysis of 3,226 publications indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection revealed an annual growth rate of 18.24%, with international collaborations accounting for 26.35% of the total output. In terms of publication volume, China, the United States, and the England ranked at the forefront, while Shanghai Jiao Tong University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences emerged as central contributors in this field. Keyword co-occurrence and burst analysis indicated a transition in research emphasis-from an initial stage centered on "force feedback" and "master-slave control" to a more sophisticated paradigm integrating "artificial intelligence", "cloud computing" and "5G communication". Simultaneously, technical challenges have evolved beyond latency optimization to include pressing issues such as cybersecurity, ethical governance, medical insurance reimbursement, and multimodal sensory integration. This study presents, for the first time, a three-stage model characterizing the knowledge evolution of RAOTS and proposes a structured framework mapping its technological development path, thereby providing empirical evidence to support future standardization, clinical translation, and interdisciplinary cooperation.