Bibliometric Analysis of Hot Trends and Future Prospects in Clinical Fat Research from 2014 to 2023.

[BACKGROUND] Significant advancements have been made in the field of clinically relevant fat research over the past decade. A systematic analysis of publications in this domain is essential. This study aims to identify research hotspots and evolving trends in clinically relevant adipose tissue research through bibliometric analysis.

[METHODS] Publications related to fat clinical research from 2014 to 2023 were extracted and analyzed from the Web of Science (WOS) Core Collection database. The data from this 10-year period were divided into two 5-year intervals (2014-2018 and 2019-2023) for analysis. Various aspects such as author keywords, countries, institutions, authors, and journal co-occurrence were studied. The data were analyzed and visualized using VOSviewer.

[RESULTS] After selecting the retrieval strategy, a total of 892 publications were extracted for the period 2014-2018 and 1622 publications for 2019-2023. Comparing the two intervals, the United States was the country with the highest number of publications (354 publications vs. 546 publications). The institution with the highest output was Peking Union Medical College (26 publications vs. 87 publications). The most prolific author was Klinger M (4 publications) vs. Hua Zuguang (18 publications). The most active journal was Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery (178 publications) vs. Aesthetic Surgery Journal (244 publications). The most active research areas were focused on "fat grafting," "liposuction," and "body contouring," with a rapid increase in research related to "facial rejuvenation" using fat grafting, suggesting it may be the next research hotspot.

[CONCLUSION] Clinical research related to fat is rapidly evolving. This study provides a visual network and trend analysis of fat research over the past decade.

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