Visualization Mapping and Current Trends of Facial Contouring Procedures: A Bibliometric Analysis Based on Web of Science.

[BACKGROUND] Facial contouring procedures become popular in recent years, but there has been no bibliometric analysis focused on this field.

[OBJECTIVE] Construct visualization maps and analyze the hotspots and current trends in this field using bibliometric analysis.

[METHODS] Publications on facial contouring procedures were extracted from the Web of Science Core Collection database from 2003 to 2022. VOSviewer, CiteSpace, and "Bibliometrix" R package were used to analyze data.

[RESULTS] Seven hundred and twenty-one publications on facial contouring procedures between 2003 and 2022 were included. The United States was the leading country both in publications (206) and citations (3941). Shanghai Jiao Tong University was the institution with the greatest contribution (35 publications with 379 citations). Hu J (17 publications) from China had the most outputs, while the most cited author was Rohrich RJ (321 citations) from the United States. The Journal of Craniofacial Surgery (135 documents) published the most research, and Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery was the most cited journal (2755 citations). The most cited article focused on virtual surgical planning in mandibular reconstruction. Keywords co-occurrence analysis identified five clusters centered on "reconstruction," "augmentation," "reduction malarplasty," "face rejuvenation," and "orthognathic surgery," separately. "Hyaluronic acid," "facial feminization," and "orthognathic surgery" might be related to trend topics.

[CONCLUSIONS] The research on facial contouring procedures is booming. In the past 2 decades, hotspots in this field included: facial defects reconstruction, facial augmentation cosmetology, facial skeletal contour plasty, and facial rejuvenation surgery. The following aspects may be trend frontiers: precision and personalization, combined treatments, transgender facial contour, and facial contour shaping with fat and hyaluronic acid.