Domestic research issues and development tendency of intervertebral disc degeneration based on bibliometrics and social network analyses

English Keywords:Intervertebral disc degeneration  Social network analysis  Core authors

English Abstract:

  【Abstract】 Objectives: To explore core authors and academic teams of intervertebral disc degeneration, and to analyze the research issues and development tendency by the method of bibliometrics and social network analysis. Methods: The search term included "degeneration", "degenerative changes" and "lumbar", "intervertebral disc", "cervical spine", "thoracic", "waist" and other free combination. The published journals in the three largest Chinese electronic database, including CNKI, Wanfang and CBM were searched. Information was extracted by RegexBuddy software. Price Law and comprehensive index assessment were used to explore core authors and academic teams. The results were illustrated by Netdraw software. Results: A total of 3361 studies, 54 core authors and 10 academic teams were included in this research. Academic thoughts, research status and development tendency were analyzed. The field of research mainly focused on the following a few big popular directions: pathogenesis and drug action mechanism research(1964, accounting for 58.43% of the total); research related to the operation(1035, 30.79%); cellular and molecular biology research(979, 29.13%); biomechanics research(854, 25.41%); zoological research(686, 20.41%); imaging studies(348, 10.35%). Conclusions: Research on mechanism is one of the hot topics in the field of intervertebral disc degeneration. Pathogenesis and progression of degeneration are discussed on levels of animals, cells and molecules. How to transform the scientific research achievements into clinical interventions and slow the degenerative process is one of the future research direction.