Worldwide research tendency and hotspots on hip fracture: a 20-year bibliometric analysis

We analyzed the overall knowledge structure, development trends, and research hotspots of 7684 publications related to hip fracture through the bibliometric method. Our results indicate this area has received more and more attention from researchers. Prevention of complications will be the focus of future studies.

Hip fracture is an international public health problem, with high morbidity, mortality, and associated health care costs. Research on hip fracture has been developed rapidly in recent years, but no bibliometric studies have been performed. We aimed to identify the publication changes in scientific output relating to hip fracture over the past two decades.

The scientific output relating to hip fracture from 2000 to 2019 was identified and selected from the Web of Science Core Collection. Excel 2019 was used to summarize the quantitative indicators including publication number, citations, H-index, journal’s impact factors, and journal citation reports. VOS viewer and CiteSpace software tools were used for co-authorship, citation, co-citation, and co-occurrence analyses between countries, institutions, journals, authors, references, and keywords. Data were analyzed on November 13, 2020.

A total of 7684 publications were extracted. The USA was the leading contributor in this field with the largest publications (1876, 24.41%), the most citations (75,423 times), and the highest H-index (124). The number of publications in the Western European region is 1.82 times higher than that of North America region, and 3.59 times that of Eastern Asia region. The most productive institutions on hip fracture were University of Maryland (160). Injury (506) had the highest number of publications, while Osteoporosis International (20,483 times) was the most co-cited journal. Magaziner J and Parker MJ were the key researchers. The keywords were stratified into five clusters: cluster 1 (“operative approaches study”), cluster 2 (“rehabilitation study”), cluster 3 (“osteoporosis study”), cluster 4 (“outcomes and complications study”), and cluster 5 (“epidemiology study”). For hotspots, “tranexamic acid” showed a relatively latest average appearing years of 2017.52, followed by “30-day-mortality,” “readmission,” and “length of stay.”

There will be an increasing number of publications on the hip fracture research based on the current global trends, and the USA stays ahead in this field. In terms of region, Western Europe had the greater impact than North America. It is recommended to pay attention to the promising hotspots, such as tranexamic acid, 30-day-mortality, readmission, and length of stay.