Economic, resource-use, and adoption signals in the robotic colorectal surgery literature: a bibliometric and...

Robotic colorectal surgery has expanded from technical feasibility to broad clinical adoption, but its economic value remains context dependent because costs interact with case selection, conversion, complications, length of stay, long-term outcomes, and health-system structure. We performed a value-oriented bibliometric and visualization analysis of Web of Science Core Collection records retrieved on August 7, 2026, using search concepts spanning economic value, resource use, adoption, implementation, access, and equity. English-language Articles and Review Articles were analyzed with R/bibliometrix-Biblioshiny and CiteSpace 6.4.R1. The final dataset included 484 publications from 2002 through August 7, 2026, comprising 374 articles and 110 reviews from 109 sources and 2,550 authors. Annual output reached 76 publications in 2025, with 53 partial-year records indexed in 2026. The ROLARR trial was the most globally cited document and had the strongest completed citation burst; the most influential documents were predominantly clinical rather than formal economic evaluations. Among the 20 most frequent author keywords, cost occurred 49 times, whereas clinical and procedural terms were substantially more frequent; no clearly independent health-economic cluster emerged from the co-citation or keyword-clustering results. Later temporal signals included cost-effectiveness, adoption, access, and newer platforms, but these topics remained embedded within a predominantly clinical and procedural knowledge structure. Thus, formal economic and equity research is present but comparatively dispersed rather than constituting an autonomous dominant literature. Future studies should integrate prospective costing with quality-adjusted and patient-reported outcomes, learning effects, implementation context, and equitable access.