Global research landscape, knowledge structure, and emerging frontiers of urological robotic telesurgery: a...

Robotic telesurgery is emerging as an important extension of robot-assisted surgery by enabling surgeons to perform procedures across geographical distances through advanced communication networks. This study aimed to characterize the global research landscape, knowledge structure, and emerging technological frontiers of urological robotic telesurgery. Bibliographic records were retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection without publication-year restrictions. After document-type and language screening, 141 English-language articles and reviews published between 1997 and 2026 were included. Bibliometric and knowledge-mapping analyses were performed using CiteSpace to evaluate publication trends, countries, institutions, authors, cited journals, co-cited references, keywords, clustering, temporal evolution, and citation bursts. Research output remained limited for more than two decades but increased markedly in recent years, reaching 25 publications in 2025 and 23 publications by August 6, 2026, representing a partial publication year. Despite this rapid increase in publication activity, direct human clinical evidence remains limited and is largely derived from relatively small clinical cohorts. The United States was the most productive country (n = 64), followed by China (n = 29), while Johns Hopkins Medicine was the leading institution. Kavoussi LR and Patel V were the most productive authors. Co-citation analysis identified landmark studies on transatlantic telesurgery, robotic urological surgery, communication latency, and 5G-enabled remote surgery as the principal intellectual foundations of the field. Keyword analysis showed that robotic surgery, robotic telesurgery, robotic urological surgery, robotic platforms, feasibility, 5G technology, and teleoperation were major research themes. The keyword clustering showed good structural quality (modularity Q = 0.5556; weighted mean silhouette score = 0.8611). Temporal and burst analyses indicated a transition from early robotic and laparoscopic applications toward network latency, 5G-enabled telesurgery, novel robotic platforms, and artificial intelligence. Overall, urological robotic telesurgery has attracted rapidly increasing research attention, with recent studies increasingly focusing on robotic platforms, network-enabled remote operation, and related enabling technologies. Further multicenter clinical validation, technical standardization, cybersecurity safeguards, and regulatory development are required before routine clinical implementation can be established.