Publication Trends on Infective Endocarditis: Comprehensive Bibliometric Analysis and Visualization Between 1892 and 2022

Background: In recent years, studies reported that the incidence of infective endocarditis (IE) has increased despite the decrease in rheumatic heart diseases, great advances in medical and surgical treatment methods, and prophylactic antibiotic therapies. However, there is no bibliometric analysis based on the visual mapping method in the literature. In the study, we aimed to analyze the hot topics in IE, the distribution of publications in terms of country, institution, journal, author, and their relationships by assessing IE articles published in the 130 years between 1892 and 2022.

Methods: Publications before 2023 were analyzed using the keywords “infective” and “endocarditis” in the Scopus database.

Results: Approximately 25% of the publications on IE were from the USA followed by Japan, France, and the UK. A total of 116 keywords were used at least 15 times and the keywords were categorized into 9 clusters by the VOSviewer program. The keywords used more than 100 times except “infective endocarditis” were “echocardiography,” “mortality,” “surgery,” “Staphylococcus aureus,” “cardiac surgery,” “epidemiology,” and “prognosis” 247, 191, 152, 142, 130, 122, and 119 times, respectively. To the best of our knowledge, the study is the most comprehensive study globally on IE with the widest time range including the visual mapping method.

Conclusion: Since our study reveals the changes in the literature related to infective endocarditis, we think that it will be a guide in planning new research studies. We believe that periodic repetition of bibliometric analyses and keyword mapping studies will contribute to the quantitative and qualitative development of scientific productivity globally.