BACKGROUND: One of the most popular bariatric procedures is sleeve gastrectomy, and it has become significantly more common in recent years. AIM: To evaluate the research activity in sleeve gastrectomy over the last two decades, and to visualize the hot spots and emerging trends in this type of bariatric surgery using bibliometric methods. METHODS: The Scopus database was used to search for publications related to sleeve gastrectomy. The retrieved publications were reviewed in terms of year of publication, type of study, country of origin, institutions, journals, and citation patterns by using descriptive analysis. Collaboration network and term co-occurrence analysis were visualized by using VOSviewer software. RESULTS: The search strategy yielded a total of 6508 publications on sleeve gastrectomy from 2001 to 2020. As regards the document type, the majority were articles ( = 5230; 80.36%), followed by reviews ( = 544; 8.36%). The top three countries are the United States, with 1983 publications (30.47%), followed by France (600; 9.22%) and Italy (417; 6.71%). The most cited publication was published in 2012 by Schauer in the ( = 1435 citations). This publication found that weight loss was greater in the sleeve gastrectomy group than in the medical therapy group. Furthermore, this study demonstrated that 12 mo of medical therapy plus bariatric surgery greatly improved glycemic regulation in obese patients with uncontrolled type 2 diabetes compared with medical therapy alone. The focus of the current literature on sleeve gastrectomy was directed toward several themes such as morbidity and potential complications, the complexity of the procedure and different surgical approaches, and diabetes and body mass index in correlation to sleeve gastrectomy. CONCLUSION: The number of sleeve gastrectomy publications has gradually grown over the last 20 years. This bibliometric analysis could help researchers better understand the knowledge base and research frontiers surrounding sleeve gastrectomy. In addition, future studies may focus on emerging research hotspots.