A Bibliometric Analysis of Acupuncture Therapy in the Treatment of Musculoskeletal Pain from 2003 to 2022

Abstract

Background

Acupuncture therapy has been widely used in the treatment of musculoskeletal pain (MP) in many countries around the world. However, there are no bibliometric studies on acupuncture therapy for MP. Therefore, the aim of this study was to analyze the current status, frontiers and hot spots in the use of acupuncture therapy for the treatment of MP.

Methods

Literature on acupuncture therapy for MP was extracted from the Web of Science Core Collection database from 2003 to 2022. CiteSpace 6.2.R4 (64-bit) software was used to analyze the number and centrality of journals, countries, institutions, authors, references and keywords, and the functions of co-occurrence and clustering were applied to draw a visual knowledge map.

Results

Over the past 20 years, the annual journal publications have been on a steady upward trend, with 438 articles published in 143 journals, including Acupuncture in Medicine Journal published the most (28, 6.39%), JAMA-Journal of the American Medical Association was the journal with the highest impact factor (IF = 120.7003), USA dominated with the most publications (140, 31.96%) among 44 countries, and among 196 research organizations Kyung Hee University was the most prolific (19, 4.34%) and Ha, In-Hyuk was the most published author (9, 2.05%). “Acupuncture” is the most popular and highly sought after keywords. “Low back pain” is the keyword with the highest centrality.

Conclusion

This article provides the current situation of the use of acupuncture therapy in the treatment of MP in the past 20 years, and statistical analysis reveals that “low back pain”, “knit osteoporosis” and “break cancer” are new research diseases related to acupuncture therapy for MP, and “myobasic trigger point” is a new research direction of acupuncture therapy for MP. Therefore, this study helps researchers grasp the research hotspots and provide certain references for in-depth research and future topic selection.

Keywords:

• musculoskeletal pain
• acupuncture therapy
• bibliometrics
• CiteSpace

Data Sharing Statement

Raw data can be directly obtained from the Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC).

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Prof. Chaomei Chen for inventing the CiteSpace visualization software and making it freely available.

Author Contributions

All authors made a significant contribution to the work reported, whether that is in the conception, study design, execution, acquisition of data, analysis and interpretation, or in all these areas; took part in drafting, revising or critically reviewing the article; gave final approval of the version to be published; have agreed on the journal to which the article has been submitted; and agree to be responsible for all aspects of the work.

Disclosure

The authors declare no conflicts of interest in this work.

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by the 2022 National Famous Elderly Chinese Medicine Experts Inheritance Workshop Construction Project (NO: National TCM Human Education Letter [2022] No. 75), the 2022 National Famous Chinese Medicine Experts Inheritance Workshop Construction Project (NO: Prof. Rixin Chen), the Jiangxi Provincial Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine’s proposal for the establishment of the second batch of Jiangxi Provincial Traditional Chinese Medicine Medical Thermal Acupuncture and Moxibustion Quality Control Centers (NO: Gan Traditional Chinese Medicine Medical Policy Letter [2023] No. 1) and the Jiangxi Provincial Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine Key Research Laboratory Construction Project of Pediatric Tuina (NO: Gan TCM Science and Education Letter [2022] No. 8) were funded.