# The developments and emerging trends of Autonomic Nervous System Research in Arrhythmia: a bibliometric study from 2004 to 2024

## TL;DR

This study analyzes 20 years of research on the autonomic nervous system's role in arrhythmias, identifying trends, key contributors, and emerging areas like precision medicine and therapies.

## Contribution

The study provides a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of autonomic nervous system research in arrhythmias, highlighting emerging trends and transformative strategies.

## Key findings

- Academic output on autonomic nervous system and arrhythmias has grown, but research is unevenly distributed globally.
- The U.S. leads in publications and collaboration, with a focus on autonomic regulation mechanisms and assessment methods.
- Ganglionated plexi ablation and electrodermal activity are identified as key intervention and evaluation strategies.

## Abstract

The role of the autonomic nervous system in cardiovascular diseases has increasingly attracted the attention of researchers. This study aims to review research on the autonomic nervous system in arrhythmias from 2004 to 2024, with a focus on understanding the development trends in this field. Data for this study were sourced from the Web of Science Core Collection. We constructed and analyzed bibliometric visualizations related to publication trends, countries/regions, institutions, journals, research categories, themes, references, and keywords. Over the past two decades, academic output related to the autonomic nervous system’s role in arrhythmias has grown, although global research distribution remains uneven. The United States leads in publication volume and is home to many high-output institutions, providing it with significant academic influence and fostering international collaboration. By summarizing high-citation literature, clustering keywords, and performing a “burst detection” analysis of keywords, we identified that the mechanisms and assessment methods for autonomic nervous system regulation are major research focuses. Recent hotspots include the psychopathology related to the autonomic nervous system and autonomic regulation therapies. As the biomedical field shifts toward precision medicine, future research trends are likely to focus on identifying precise biomarkers for assessing autonomic nervous system function and developing novel strategies to regulate it. These strategies may include correcting immune dysfunction, psychological interventions, and surgical treatments. This study suggests that ganglionated plexi ablation may represent the most transformative intervention strategy for the Autonomic Nervous System currently available, and highlights electrodermal activity as an evaluation index with considerable potential for widespread application.