Research trends and hotspots in sclerotherapy for vascular malformations: bibliometric and visual analyses
Abstract
Introduction: Vascular malformations are a group of congenital vascular developmental anomalies. According to the International Society for the Study of Vascular Anomalies classification, they are mainly divided into Slow-Flow and Fast-Flow lesions. Slow-Flow lesions are represented by venous malformations, lymphatic malformations, and capillary malformations; Fast-Flow lesions primarily include arteriovenous malformations and arteriovenous fistulae. As a minimally invasive interventional approach, sclerotherapy has become a first-line treatment for Slow-Flow vascular malformations; significant advances in techniques, agents, and combination therapies have been made in recent years. However, a systematic bibliometric analysis of overall research trends, knowledge structure, and frontier hotspots in this field is lacking.
Methods: Using the Web of Science Core Collection and PubMed databases, we retrieved literature on sclerotherapy for vascular malformations from 2005 to 2025, including 2,040 and 1,855 articles, respectively. VOSviewer, CiteSpace and Bibliometrix were employed to analyze publication trends, collaboration networks, journal distribution, highly cited literature, keyword clustering, and burst detection. Cross-validation across the two databases was performed to enhance robustness.
Results: Annual publications accelerated from 2015 and showed an explosive increase after 2020. China, the United States, and Japan were the top three publishing countries, with 535,…
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