Acute postoperative pain management after cardiothoracic surgery: a bibliometric analysis and future directions

Acute postoperative pain following cardiothoracic surgery remains a significant clinical challenge with numerous studies on its management published over the past decades. This study aims to summarize research progress and identify future research trends in acute postoperative pain management after cardiothoracic surgery using retrospective bibliometric analysis.

Relevant studies on acute postoperative pain management following cardiothoracic surgery were retrieved from the Science Citation Index Expanded of the Web of Science Core Collection database, covering the period from January 1, 2004, to January 1, 2024. VOSviewer was used to perform and visualize analyses of total publications, contributing countries, research institutions, journals, authors, co-citation networks, and keyword co-occurrence. CiteSpace was employed to visualize burst analyses of co-cited references and keywords.

From 2004 to 2024, a total of 740 papers on acute postoperative pain management in cardiothoracic surgery were published, authored by 4,054 researchers from 911 organizations across 50 countries. These papers appeared in 196 journals and cited 10,902 references from 2,242 journals. The most high-yield publication year, countries, institutions, journals, authors were 2021 (n=96), China (n=173), Cleveland Clinic (n=14), Journal of Cardiothoracic and Vascular Anesthesia(n=108), and Chauhan, S (n=6), respectively. Regional nerve blocks were one of the significant research topics in acute postoperative pain management following cardiothoracic surgery. In recent years, the keywords with the strongest citation burst were erector spinae plane block, enhanced recovery, thoracic paravertebral block, nerve block, plane block, and liposomal bupivacaine.

This study provides a bibliometric overview of the development of acute postoperative pain management in cardiothoracic surgery over the past two decades. Overall, research in this field has shown a steady increase globally. The future research hotspots might be erector spinae plane block, enhanced recovery, thoracic paravertebral block, nerve block, and liposomal bupivacaine.