Li Simin, Zhao Dan, Chen Jiemin, He Longwen, Hu Shaonan, Zhang Wenzhong
Stomatological Hospital, School of Stomatology, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, China, S366 Jiangnan Boulevard, Haizhu District, Guangdong Province, 510280.
J Orofac Orthop. 2025 Aug 4. doi: 10.1007/s00056-025-00604-y.
Early orthodontic treatment has evolved significantly over the past decades, with advances in diagnostic techniques, treatment methodologies, and interdisciplinary approaches. Despite its importance in pediatric dental care, a comprehensive bibliometric evaluation of research trends in this field has been lacking.
To conduct a systematic bibliometric analysis of the research landscape and developmental trends in early orthodontic intervention for children and adolescents from 2000-2025.
Literature data were retrieved from Web of Science Core Collection and Scopus databases using comprehensive search strategies targeting early orthodontic treatment research. The final dataset of 906 articles was analyzed using VOSviewer 1.6.20 and CiteSpace 6.1R6 visualization software to examine publication trends, author and institutional collaboration networks, journal distributions, geographical contributions, and keyword co-occurrence patterns.
Research output demonstrated consistent growth from 6 publications in 2000 to 85 in 2023. Lorenzo Franchi emerged as the most productive author (12 publications), while the University of Milan led institutional contributions (28 publications). The American Journal of Orthodontics and Dentofacial Orthopedics was the primary publication venue (88 articles). Italy (161 publications) and the USA (144 publications) were the leading contributors. Keyword analysis revealed "children" as the most frequent term (270 occurrences), followed by "orthodontic treatment" (125 occurrences) and "prevalence" (106 occurrences), with distinct evolution patterns showing a transition from fundamental concepts like "growth" (appearing in 2000) to specialized terms such as "obstructive sleep apnea" (2015) and "quality of life" (2020), while citation burst analysis identified "quality of life" with the strongest recent burst strength (5.92).
Early orthodontic treatment research has evolved from foundational concepts to patient-centered outcomes and technological applications, with increasing interdisciplinary focus and internationalization requiring sustained collaborative efforts to address emerging clinical priorities.
在过去几十年中，早期正畸治疗随着诊断技术、治疗方法和多学科方法的进步而有了显著发展。尽管其在儿童牙科护理中很重要，但该领域研究趋势的全面文献计量学评估一直缺乏。
对2000年至2025年儿童和青少年早期正畸干预的研究格局和发展趋势进行系统的文献计量分析。
使用针对早期正畸治疗研究的综合检索策略，从Web of Science核心合集和Scopus数据库中检索文献数据。使用VOSviewer 1.6.20和CiteSpace 6.1R6可视化软件对906篇文章的最终数据集进行分析，以研究出版趋势、作者和机构合作网络、期刊分布、地域贡献以及关键词共现模式。
研究产出从2000年的6篇出版物持续增长至2023年的85篇。洛伦佐·弗兰奇是产出最多的作者（12篇出版物），而米兰大学在机构贡献方面领先（28篇出版物）。《美国正畸与牙颌面正畸杂志》是主要的出版平台（88篇文章）。意大利（161篇出版物）和美国（144篇出版物）是主要贡献国。关键词分析显示，“儿童”是出现频率最高的术语（270次），其次是“正畸治疗”（125次）和“患病率”（106次），其独特的演变模式显示出从“生长”等基本概念（2000年出现）向“阻塞性睡眠呼吸暂停”（2015年）和“生活质量”（2020年）等专业术语的转变，而共被引分析确定“生活质量”具有最强的近期共被引强度（5.92）。
早期正畸治疗研究已从基础概念发展到以患者为中心的结果和技术应用，跨学科关注度不断提高且日益国际化，需要持续的合作努力来应对新出现的临床重点。
