Department of Intensive Care, Austin Hospital, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia,
Department of Intensive Care, Austin Hospital, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
Blood Purif. 2024;53(4):279-287. doi: 10.1159/000534915. Epub 2023 Oct 31.
Liver failure is a life-threatening condition characterized by the accumulation of metabolic toxins. Extracorporeal albumin dialysis (ECAD) has been promoted as a possible therapy.
We employed bibliometric analysis to scrutinize the conceptual, intellectual, and social structure of the ECAD literature including its co-citation network and thematic analysis to explore its evolution and organization.
We identified 784 documents with a mean of 30.25 citations per document in a corpus of 15,191 references. The average citation rate peaked in 1998 at 280.75 citations/year before a second 2013 peak of 54.81 citations/year and then progressively decreased to its nadir in 2022 (1.48 yearly citations). We identified four primary co-citation clusters, with the most impactful publications being small "positive" manuscripts by Mitzner et al. (2000) and Heemann et al. (2002) (Cluster 1). This first cluster had several relational citations with clusters 2 and 3, but almost no citation link with cluster 4 represented by Bañares et al. (2013), Saliba et al. (2013), and Larsen et al. (2016), with their three negative randomized controlled trials. Finally, the thematic map revealed a shift in focus over time, with inflammation and ammonia as recent emergent themes.
This bibliometric analysis provided a transparent and reproducible longitudinal assessment of ECAD literature and demonstrated how positive studies with low levels of evidence can dominate a research field and overshadow negative findings from higher quality studies. These insights hold significant implications for future research and clinical practice within this domain.
肝衰竭是一种危及生命的疾病，其特征是代谢毒素的积累。体外白蛋白透析（ECAD）已被推广为一种可能的治疗方法。
我们采用文献计量分析方法，仔细研究了 ECAD 文献的概念、知识和社会结构，包括其共引网络和主题分析，以探讨其演变和组织。
我们在 15191 篇参考文献的语料库中确定了 784 篇文献，每篇文献的平均引用率为 30.25 次。1998 年的平均引用率达到峰值，为 280.75 次/年，随后在 2013 年出现第二次峰值，为 54.81 次/年，然后逐渐下降到 2022 年的最低点（每年 1.48 次）。我们确定了四个主要的共引聚类，其中最有影响力的出版物是 Mitzner 等人（2000 年）和 Heemann 等人（2002 年）的小型“阳性”手稿（聚类 1）。这个第一个聚类与聚类 2 和 3 有几个关系引用，但与聚类 4 几乎没有引用联系，聚类 4 由 Bañares 等人（2013 年）、Saliba 等人（2013 年）和 Larsen 等人（2016 年）代表，他们的三项阴性随机对照试验。最后，主题图显示随着时间的推移，重点发生了转移，炎症和氨成为新的涌现主题。
这项文献计量分析提供了对 ECAD 文献的透明和可重复的纵向评估，并展示了低证据水平的阳性研究如何主导一个研究领域，并掩盖来自高质量研究的负面发现。这些见解对该领域的未来研究和临床实践具有重要意义。
