Global Trends and Research Topics in Gastric Bypass Clinical Trials: A Bibliometric Analysis and Latent Dirichlet...

Gastric bypass (GB) is a widely adopted metabolic bariatric surgical procedure associated with substantial weight loss and significant metabolic benefits. In light of the expanding body of literature in this field, the present study aimed to map and analyze the global scientific output of clinical trials on GB, with emphasis on overall publication trends, the most productive countries and authors, the ten most highly cited articles, and the thematic evolution of research topics.

The search term "gastric bypass" was used to retrieve publications indexed in the Web of Science, PubMed, and Scopus databases from 2001 to 2024. Bibliometric indicators were integrated with normalization strategies based on population size, the number of bariatric procedures performed, and the prevalence of obesity. Data on authorship, countries, citation counts, and keywords were extracted and analyzed. Topic modeling was conducted using Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA).

A total of 1,066 studies were included, demonstrating an average annual growth rate of 10.2%, with a marked expansion observed after 2013. The United States led in absolute publication volume, whereas European countries exhibited higher relative productivity after normalization. The ten most highly cited studies accumulated more than 12,000 citations. Topic modeling identified emerging, stable, and declining thematic domains, with dominant topics primarily focused on diabetes mellitus and showing continued growth.

The United States and Europe dominate scientific output, while several regions remain underrepresented. The most prominent and expanding research themes involve diabetes mellitus, whereas cardiovascular aspects, thromboembolism prophylaxis, hepatic steatosis, gut microbiota, and mental health remain comparatively underexplored in the literature.