Research progress of pre-hospital emergency during 2000-2020: a bibliometric analysis

Background: The past decade has witnessed the preliminary development of pre-hospital emergency. We analyzed the scientific output related to pre-hospital emergency in the past two decades, aiming to evaluate the publication status of the literature related to pre-hospital emergency through bibliometrics analysis, and hope to provide enlightenment of trends and hotspots for the development of pre-hospital emergency. Method: By web of science, all literature on pre-hospital emergency from 2000 to 2 October 2020 was retrieved and screened by two researchers. Excel, Social Sciences Statistics Package (SPSS, version 24) and software GraphPad Prism 8 were used to analyze the publication trend in related fields. Besides, VOSviewer, Citespace were also applied to visualize the research trends and study the co-occurring keywords in pre-hospital emergency. Results: As of 2 October 2020, a total of 1839 pre-hospital emergency publications with total citation of 32800 times were identified. The United States accounted for the largest number of publications (36.7%) and the highest number of citations (12825), but its H-index was fourth (20.17). In the aspects of journals and articles, Prehospital Emergency Care is the most published journal in pre-hospital emergency (256), while the articles from Smith K presented the highest citation frequency (751). We can also obtain the information that the overall trend is upward, and developed countries contribute most. Complications is a hot research field in intensive care. In the identification research cluster, acute ischemic stroke was determined to be the hotspot, while secondary outcome was the new trend in the first-aid cluster. As for the management, embase was noted as new topics. Conclusion: In the past decade, researches on pre-hospital emergency has increased rapidly. However, the related articles were mainly published in developed countries, the United States has absolute advantages especially. Moreover, first-aid studies may become hotspots in the near future.

Automated summary

In the past two decades, pre-hospital emergency research has been growing rapidly with the United States leading in both publication numbers and citations. Developed countries contribute significantly to the literature, with hot research fields including complications and acute ischemic stroke. New topics in first-aid management such as embase are emerging trends.