Scientific Interest in Lymphedema Rehabilitation; A Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract

Background: To conduct bibliometric analysis to explore scientific interest in lymphedema rehabilitation. Method: The data for this study was obtained from Scopus, a multidisciplinary database, for the period of fifty-four years (1969-2023) using keywords ‘lymphedema’ and ‘rehabilitation’. Results: When the term 'Lymphedema' is scanned, 22.080 articles found; In addition, when we added the term 'rehabilitation', 747 articles were found. 271 of the articles were open Access. When we look at the year distribution, the highest number of articles was in 2022 year (N=88). There were 3 articles in 2023 year, 70 in 2021 year, 58 in 2020 year, and 54 year in 2019. USA (184), Italy (51), German (50), Spain (42), Poland (38), Turkey (36), Canada (35), Australia (33), South Korea (33), the United Kingdom (33), produced the most lymphedema rehabilitation research. The distributions of documents types were; article (528), review (151), conference paper (17), editorial (15), book chapter (14) and short survey (9). English was the most common Language with 609 paper. The names of the top 10 authors were as listed; Schmitz KH (13), Armer, JM (12), Invernizzi M (9), Grushina TI (8), Staut NL (8), Stubblefield MD (7), Crevenna R (6), De Urieze T (6), Fusco N (6) and Jean JYO (6). The total number of citations was 1764, the maximum citation was in 2022. H index of the citations was 57. Conclusion: We see the multidisciplinary interest in lymphedema rehabilitation, rising over the years. As a result of early diagnosis of cancer and increased awareness of survival, lymphedema rehabilitation will become among the trend topics of research area.