Comparative analysis of research hotspots and development trends of pediatric palliative care at home and abroad based on CiteSpace: a bibliometric study

TL;DR

This study compares global and Chinese research trends in pediatric palliative care using bibliometric analysis, revealing gaps and future directions.

Contribution

The novel contribution is a comparative bibliometric analysis of global and Chinese pediatric palliative care research using CiteSpace.

Findings

Global publications on pediatric palliative care are nearly ten times higher than in China.

Foreign research focuses on patient experience and service barriers, while Chinese research emphasizes methodology and service systems.

Future trends suggest multidisciplinary collaboration, AI-driven tools, and improved social awareness in pediatric palliative care.

Abstract

To visualize and analyze the literature on palliative care for children based on Web of Science and CNKI database.

The research literature on child palliative care included in the Web of Science and CNKI databases from 2000 to 2024 was searched, and the publication volume, authors, institutions, keyword clusters and emerging words of the literature were analyzed by CiteSpace 6.3.R2 software, and the publication trends, core force distribution and theme evolution paths of Chinese and foreign studies were compared.

A total of 1,256 articles were included, and the visual analysis structure showed that the number of publications on palliative care for children in China and abroad showed an overall upward trend, but there was a significant gap in the overall number of publications, and the number of publications in foreign countries was nearly ten times that of China. In terms of research strength, foreign countries have close cooperation with Harvard University and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute as the core. China is concentrated in medical institutions in first-tier cities in the east, and cooperation is loose; From the analysis of keywords, it can be seen that foreign research hotspots focus on patient experience, and in recent years, they have shifted to practice optimization such as service barriers, while China focuses on methodology and service system construction.

It is expected that the future research on global child palliative care will carry out multidisciplinary collaboration and resource integration, reduce practical barriers, improve social cognition, and artificial intelligence technology-driven and optimize needs assessment tools.

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