Fan Yang,1 Yongqiang Cui,1 Yuejuan Zhao,2 Hongguan Jiao3 

1International Cooperation Department, Guang‘anmen Hospital, China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, Beijing, People’s Republic of China; 2GCP Center, Guang ‘anmen Hospital, China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, Beijing, People’s Republic of China; 3School of Information Engineering, International Exchange and Cooperation Office, Guizhou University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Guiyang, People’s Republic of China

Correspondence: Fan Yang, International Cooperation Department, Guang ‘anmen Hospital, China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, Beijing, People’s Republic of China, Tel +86-1 381 096 1871, Fax +86-10-88001262, Email michelleone@163.com

Purpose: This study aimed to apply the bibliometric analysis to summarize acupuncture therapy for stroke, demonstrated and evaluated the trends, major research hotspots and frontier areas.
Materials and Methods: Articles on acupuncture for stroke were selected from the Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC) from the inception of the database up until 2023. CiteSpace software was performed to conduct the collaborative analysis of networks of countries, institutions, authors and cited authors, journals and cited journals, cited references, keywords clustering and burstiness analysis.
Results: A total of 1141 articles were retrieved. China was the most productive country (851) and had the greatest centrality (0.43). Beijing Univ Chinese Med (86) contributed to the most publications. Chen LD (31) and Tao J (31) were the most prolific authors, of which all from Fujian Univ Tradit Chinese Med. Wu P (124) from Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine, Canada, was the most cited author. Evidence-based Complementary and Alternative Medicine (89) was the most productive journal, while Stroke (744) was first cited journals. Stimulation, recovery, ischemic stroke, electroacupuncture, rehabilitation were the most high-frequency keywords. Future research in this area will pay more attention to the evaluation of the effectiveness of acupuncture therapeutics in treating stroke, conducting the clinical research on cognitive ability, quality of life and partial function of stroke patients, and basic research related to mechanisms.
Conclusion: The publications on acupuncture in stroke have shown major development, but the international cooperation for academic exchange among researchers and institutions remained to be strengthened to promote interdisciplinary and academic innovation. Furthermore, except for the molecular mechanism of acupuncture in treating functional rehabilitation of stroke, exploring the more high-quality clinical studies may become a key point based on the evidence-based medicine.

Keywords: acupuncture, stroke, bibliometric analysis, visualization, research trends