A bibliometric analysis of root canal irrigation: From laboratory to clinical practice

Abstract

The study aims to conduct a bibliometric analysis on root canal irrigation to elucidate the development of this domain and pose the future research trends. Of 6722 articles retrieved from Clarivate Analytics' Web of Science Core Collection and PubMed, 6650 publications were included for bibliometric analysis. Irrigation field had received emerging attention for the last half century, peaking at 399 in 2022. The United States was revealed as the most influential contributor, with Journal of Endodontics representing the most voluminous resource. Franklin R Tay was regarded as the most productive author, while Siqueira, Jose. F. was the most prominent. Both keywords cluster analysis and burst analysis revealed the main research branch fields were irrigation protocols. Within this branch, the discussion of irrigants (with a frequency of 1135) ranked first. This bibliometric study revealed the research hotspot of irrigants, while suggesting the future directions of irrigants' creations and micro‐level mechanism elucidation.