PURPOSE: The treatment of anterior shoulder instability is a focus in the field of sports medicine. While much research has been conducted, few bibliometric studies have been performed in this field. This study analyzed the main characteristics and identified emerging research trends and hotspots related to the treatment of anterior shoulder instability over the past four decades. METHODS: We searched for (anterior shoulder instability OR anterior shoulder dislocation) AND (treatment OR reconstruction) in ARTICLE (Mesh) in the Web of Science database from 1980 to 2020. We analyzed the keywords, author, institution, country, number of citations, average number of citations, publication year, and partnership of the identified articles. Information about annual publications was analyzed using Microsoft Excel 2019; the remaining data were analyzed using VOSviewer version 1.6.11 (Leiden University, Leiden, Netherlands) and CiteSpace version 5.7.R2 (Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, USA). RESULTS: A total of 1964 articles were published between 1980 and 2020. The American Journal of Sports Medicine, the United States, the United States Department of Defense, and Arcieio were journals, countries, institutions, and authors with the highest numbers of publications. The topic hotspots were instability, shoulder, and dislocation, while the research frontiers were arthroscopic, Bankart repair, Latarjet procedure, risk factors, recurrence, and complications. CONCLUSION: The treatment of anterior shoulder instability has shown an increasing number of publications each year and achieved great progress. The United States made the most outstanding contributions to this important field. Arthroscopic, Bankart repair, and Latarjet procedures were research hotspots and risk factors, recurrence, and complications were likely to research frontiers.