Analyzing the Global Trend of Publications on Laryngeal Mask Airway

Bibliometrics evaluates the scientific publications in different fields from different aspects. However, the bibliometric state of global research publications on Laryngeal Mask Airway (LMA), as a main progressive medical field, is unknown.

This study aimed to conduct a bibliometric analysis and scientific visualization for inspecting some main bibliometric indicators of the research publications in the field.

This study is a descriptive cross-sectional applied study that used bibliometric techniques. MeSH-retrieved synonyms for LMA were searched in Scopus and the bibliometric indicators of retrieved papers in the field were measured and visualized in Excel and VOSviewer.

In total, 9,783 papers were published on LMA during 1952-2021, starting from one paper in1952 and amounted to 255 in 2021. With ups and downs in the annual publication growth, steady trend was seen in the growth coefficient of publications (R²=.1652). The first to third ranks in publishing countries belonged to the United States with 1,783 papers (18.22%), the United Kingdom with 1,632 papers (16.68%) and Japan with 729 papers (7.45%), respectively. Among active research institutes, Cairns Hospital from Australia ranked first with publishing 284 papers, followed by the University of Queenslandagain from Australia with publishing 141 papers and Royal United Hospital from England with 117 published papers, respectively. Anaesthesia ranked first highly-publishing journal with 1,049 published papers, followed by Anesthesia and Analgesia with 487 published papers and Pediatric Anaesthesia with 448 published documents. Anaesthesia was the main cited source, too. The top three highly-frequent keywords were laryngeal mask airway (N=223), equipment (N=132) and airway management (N=116), respectively. Co-occurred keywords were in four subject clusters.

This study is the first to give a relatively comprehensive bibliometric analysis and visualization of the global research publication and a guide for researchers and research policy-makers in LMA, as a progressive medical discipline.