Enhanced recovery after surgery from 1990 to 2024: A bibliometric and visual analysis

This study aimed to analyze publications from 1990 to 2024 to examine the relationship of Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) with countries, institutions, authors, journals, references, and keywords.

We searched for ERAS-related publications between 1990 and 2024 in the Web of Science Core Collection (WOSCC) database. The strategy included the following search terms: "TS=ERAS" OR "enhanced recovery" OR "enhanced recovery after surgery" OR "enhanced recovery after surgery eras" OR "enhanced recovery program" OR "enhanced recovery protocol" OR "eras protocol" OR "eras r" OR "fast track" OR "fast track surgery" OR "fast-track" OR "fast-track surgery." The search was restricted to articles and reviews in all languages. All results were filtered using these criteria on WOSCC and exported as a plain text file. Visual analyses were performed using Microsoft Word and VOS viewer 1.6.20.

A total of 4,275 publications and 111,922 citations were identified. Overall, 101 countries contributed to ERAS research, with the United States ranking first. The institution with the highest number of publications was Harvard University. Nicolas Demartines ranked first with 51 publications, while H. Kehlet was the most frequently cited author. Among the journals publishing on ERAS, Transplantation had the highest number of publications. The most cited source was Enhanced Recovery After Surgery: A Review. Keyword analysis revealed that "enhanced recovery after surgery" was the primary research focus within the existing literature.

The findings of this study demonstrate that, particularly since 2008, there has been a steadily growing interest in ERAS worldwide.