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SYSTEMATIC REVIEW article

Front. Pharmacol.
Sec. Pharmacology of Anti-Cancer Drugs
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fphar.2024.1449722
This article is part of the Research Topic Advances in Chemotherapy-Resistant Hepatocellular Carcinoma, Volume II View all 4 articles

A bibliometric analysis of 30 years of research on transarterial radioembolization (TARE) for hepatocellular carcinoma

Provisionally accepted
Tongyao Hu Tongyao Hu 1,2Qifan Xu Qifan Xu 1,3Guorong Jia Guorong Jia 1Tao Wang Tao Wang 1*Changjing Zuo Changjing Zuo 1*
  • 1 Department of Nuclear Medicine, The First Affiliated Hospital of Naval Medical University, Shanghai, China
  • 2 Department of Nuclear Medicine, No. 923 Hospital, Nanning, China
  • 3 School of Medical Imaging, Xuzhou Medical University, Xuzhou, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Introduction: Patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) have very limited treatment options, among which transarterial radioembolization (TARE) receives increasing attention, relying on its promising efficacy and fewer side effect. However, a bibliometric analysis of TARE for HCC is still lacking. This study employed bibliometric methods to analyze the related articles over the past three decades, and aimed to identify trends in clinical research comparing TARE to other treatments.Methods: Articles related with TARE for HCC were obtained from the Web of Science (WoS). After screening, the R package Bibliometrix was employed to explore the primary bibliometric characteristics. The number of publications was analyzed and mathematically fitted to a curve using Microsoft Excel 2021 and SPSS 25, and then was plotted in the graph using GraphPad Prism 8.0. VOSviewer, SCImago Graphica, and Pajek were utilized for the analysis of researchers' co-authorship, cooccurrence, and visualization. Keywords citation burst was detected by CiteSpace software.Results: A total of 1,110 articles from 1993 to 2023 were included in our final analysis, among which the United States not only ranked the first in term of the number of published articles, also was at the forefront in other important indicators, including the total number of article citations and the average citation frequency. Riad Salem from Northwestern University, also being the organization with the greatest number of research papers, was the most active author and has published 96 papers. The keywords were classified into three clusters: 90 Y microspheres for TARE, Basic research on TARE, and Clinical trial of TARE for HCC. Furthermore, we identified the most frequently cited keywords with strong citation bursts since 2020 were "multicenter", "overall survival" and "PET/CT".Our study employed a bibliometric approach to achieve the visualization research on TARE for HCC, and further revealed the trends and frontiers of TARE research, providing valuable information for researchers to identify the critical and persistent challenges and select potential partners in related area. Based on our analysis, future research focus include the clinical comparative studies on the effect of TARE and TACE combined with immunotherapies or targeted therapy, dosimetry, and personalized TARE therapy for HCC.

    Keywords: Bibliometric analysis1, Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC)2, transarterial radioembolization (TARE)3, 90 Y microspheres4, research trend5, Visualization6

    Received: 16 Jun 2024; Accepted: 04 Dec 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Hu, Xu, Jia, Wang and Zuo. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence:
    Tao Wang, Department of Nuclear Medicine, The First Affiliated Hospital of Naval Medical University, Shanghai, China
    Changjing Zuo, Department of Nuclear Medicine, The First Affiliated Hospital of Naval Medical University, Shanghai, China

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.