Long-Term Ocular and Neurodevelopmental Outcomes of Retinopathy of Prematurity: A Bibliometric and Thematic Evolution...

To map the global research landscape on the long-term outcomes of retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) and quantify the representation of four clinically relevant outcome domains: visual and refractive outcomes, structural retinal and macular sequelae, late post-treatment complications, and neurodevelopmental and quality-of-life outcomes.

Two Web of Science Core Collection datasets were created on July 21, 2026 and limited to English-language original articles: Dataset A (general long-term ROP outcomes) and Dataset B (long-term outcomes after ROP treatment). Bibliometric analyses were performed in R using the bibliometrix package. A predefined 108-term outcome lexicon was applied to merged Author Keywords and Keywords Plus. Domain distributions were compared using the chi-square test, and representation ratios were calculated with 95% confidence intervals (CI).

Dataset A included 6,946 articles from 1,035 sources, whereas Dataset B included 1,296 articles from 238 sources. The United States was the leading contributor in both datasets. Türkiye ranked third and fourth in publication output but showed the lowest international collaboration rate (0.9%) among leading countries. Visual and refractive outcomes were the most frequently represented domain (1.95% and 4.07% of keyword occurrences), whereas neurodevelopmental and quality-of-life outcomes were the least represented and the only domain underrepresented in the treatment literature (0.60% vs. 0.35%; representation ratio 0.59, 95% CI 0.43-0.83; p=0.003).

Research on long-term ROP outcomes is expanding rapidly, but the transition from acute treatment to survivorship remains incomplete. Greater emphasis on neurodevelopmental and quality-of-life outcomes and stronger international collaboration are needed.