Palliative care in hematologic malignancies: a bibliometric review and visualization analysis from 2000 to 2025

Patients with hematologic malignancies experience a substantial symptom burden and uncertain disease trajectories, yet palliative care is often integrated later than in solid-tumor oncology. This study characterized publication patterns, collaboration networks, research topics, and citation structures in this literature from 2000 to 2025.

The Web of Science Core Collection and Scopus were searched on June 10, 2026, for English-language articles and reviews published during 2000-2025. After database integration, deduplication, screening, and full-text treatment-content verification, 307 publications were included. VOSviewer and the bibliometrix package in R were used to summarize annual output, leading contributors, keyword co-occurrence, trend topics, thematic communities, keyword bursts, local citations, and reference co-citation. A structured narrative synthesis contextualized highly cited and recent publications.

The corpus comprised 258 articles and 49 reviews published between 2001 and 2025. Annual output increased at a descriptive rate of 17.6% and was higher after 2017, reaching 49 publications in 2025. The United States contributed 146 publications, while international co-authorship accounted for 14.98% of the corpus. Duke University and Harvard University were the leading institutional groups, Thomas W. LeBlanc was the most productive author, and the Journal of Palliative Medicine published the most articles. Seven palliative, supportive care, or hospice journals accounted for 38.8% of publications, whereas three leading hematology journals contributed 19 articles. Keyword co-occurrence, median publication years, thematic communities, and burst analyses indicated that recent publications more frequently addressed early palliative care, integration, communication, quality of life, health care access, equity and disparities, and care alongside hematopoietic stem-cell transplantation. The substantive literature described late referral, intensive care near death, transfusion access, prognostic uncertainty, caregiver needs, and limited primary palliative care capacity.

This literature has expanded and increasingly examines concurrent palliative care during intensive hematologic treatment. Research remains concentrated in a limited number of countries, institutions, author groups, and palliative care journals. Further empirical studies could examine underrepresented settings and topics, including community, rural, and international care, caregiver support, primary palliative care, equity, and palliative transfusion. These bibliometric findings describe the structure and topics of the literature; they do not address clinical effectiveness or changes in practice.