Hu Tongyao, Xu Qifan, Jia Guorong, Wang Tao, Zuo Changjing
Department of Nuclear Medicine, The First Affiliated Hospital of Naval Medical University, Shanghai, China.
Department of Nuclear Medicine, No. 923 Hospital, Nanning, China.
Front Pharmacol. 2025 Jan 6;15:1449722. doi: 10.3389/fphar.2024.1449722. eCollection 2024.
Patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) have very limited treatment options, among which transarterial radioembolization (TARE) receives increasing attention, relying on its promising efficacy and fewer side effect. However, a bibliometric analysis of TARE for HCC is still lacking. This study employed bibliometric methods to analyze the related articles over the past three decades, and aimed to identify trends in clinical research comparing TARE to other treatments.
Articles related with TARE for HCC were obtained from the Web of Science (WoS). After screening, the R package Bibliometrix was employed to explore the primary bibliometric characteristics. The number of publications was analyzed and mathematically fitted to a curve using Microsoft Excel 2021 and SPSS 25, and then was plotted in the graph using GraphPad Prism 8.0. VOSviewer, SCImago Graphica, and Pajek were utilized for the analysis of researchers' co-authorship, co-occurrence, and visualization. Keywords citation burst was detected by CiteSpace software.
A total of 1,110 articles from 1993 to 2023 were included in our final analysis, among which the United States not only ranked the first in term of the number of published articles, also was at the forefront in other important indicators, including the total number of article citations and the average citation frequency. Riad Salem from Northwestern University, also being the organization with the greatest number of research papers, was the most active author and has published 96 papers. The keywords were classified into three clusters: Y microspheres for TARE, Basic research on TARE, and Clinical trial of TARE for HCC. Furthermore, we identified the most frequently cited keywords with strong citation bursts since 2020 were "multicenter," "overall survival" and "PET/CT."
Our study employed a bibliometric approach to achieve the visualization research on TARE for HCC, and further revealed the trends and frontiers of TARE research, providing valuable information for researchers to identify the critical and persistent challenges and select potential partners in related area. Based on our analysis, future research focus include the clinical comparative studies on the effect of TARE and TACE combined with immunotherapies or targeted therapy, dosimetry, and personalized TARE therapy for HCC.
晚期肝细胞癌（HCC）患者的治疗选择非常有限，其中经动脉放射性栓塞术（TARE）因其疗效显著且副作用较少而受到越来越多的关注。然而，目前仍缺乏对TARE治疗HCC的文献计量分析。本研究采用文献计量方法分析过去三十年的相关文章，旨在确定比较TARE与其他治疗方法的临床研究趋势。
从科学网（WoS）获取与TARE治疗HCC相关的文章。筛选后，使用R包Bibliometrix探索主要文献计量特征。使用Microsoft Excel 2021和SPSS 25分析出版物数量并进行数学曲线拟合，然后使用GraphPad Prism 8.0绘制在图表中。利用VOSviewer、SCImago Graphica和Pajek进行研究人员合作、共现和可视化分析。通过CiteSpace软件检测关键词引用爆发。
我们的最终分析纳入了1993年至2023年的1110篇文章，其中美国不仅在发表文章数量方面排名第一，在其他重要指标方面也处于领先地位，包括文章总被引次数和平均被引频次。西北大学的里亚德·塞勒姆是发表研究论文数量最多的机构，也是最活跃的作者，已发表96篇论文。关键词分为三个聚类：用于TARE的钇微球、TARE的基础研究以及TARE治疗HCC的临床试验。此外，我们确定自2020年以来被引频次最高且具有强烈引用爆发的关键词是“多中心”、“总生存期”和“PET/CT”。
我们的研究采用文献计量方法实现了对TARE治疗HCC的可视化研究，进一步揭示了TARE研究的趋势和前沿，为研究人员识别关键和持续存在的挑战以及在相关领域选择潜在合作伙伴提供了有价值的信息。基于我们的分析，未来的研究重点包括TARE与经动脉化疗栓塞术（TACE）联合免疫疗法或靶向治疗效果的临床比较研究、剂量测定以及HCC的个性化TARE治疗。
