Global trends in surgical ethics research: a bibliometric analysis

Area of Science:

• Medical Ethics
• Bioethics
• Surgical Practice

Background:

• Surgical technology advances increase procedure complexity, intensifying ethical issues.
• Surgical ethics is an emerging field with growing scientific interest.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the development and trends of publications in surgical ethics.
• To synthesize findings on surgical ethics research.

Main Methods:

• Bibliometric analysis of 217 publications from Web of Science Core Collection.
• Keywords: "surgical ethics", "operating room ethics".
• Analysis using Bibliometrix-Biblioshiny package in R.

Main Results:

• Average publication age under 10 years; publication volume increased significantly from 2023.
• Citation rates accelerated post-2020, averaging 5.9 citations/document.
• Key research topics include bioethics, informed consent, and medical ethics.

Conclusions:

• Surgical ethics is an emerging and expanding research field.
• A significant limitation is the scarcity of high-level evidence studies.
• Findings offer an overview and highlight future research directions.