Worldwide research trends on bone metastases of lung cancer: a bibliometric analysis.

Background: Lung cancer has the highest fatality rate among all malignancies worldwide. Within this disease, bone metastasis (BM) emerges as a particularly deleterious site of metastatic dissemination, marked by a dismal prognosis. The objective of this investigation is to shed light on the current international research efforts and the development trajectory on lung cancer BM through a bibliometric analysis (performance and visualization analysis). Method: Data were obtained from the Web of Science Core Collection repository on lung cancer BM from 1 January 2012 to 1 January 2022. Subsequently, the collected data underwent scrutiny using the VOSviewer software to reveal patterns of co-authorship, co-citation, and keyword analysis, while the CiteSpace software facilitated the generation of keyword cluster maps and performed burst analyses. Results: The study included 327 papers of 2,154 authors, 587 organizations, and 41 countries, and explored the cooperation between them and the relationships between citations. Over the past decade, published papers showed a steady growth trend. China had the highest production with 189 papers, and USA had the highest collaboration with other countries, with 43 total link strength. Conclusion: This bibliometric study provides a comprehensive analysis of lung cancer BM in the recent 10 years. The field of early diagnosis, pathogenesis, and new treatments is entering a phase of rapid development and remains valuable for future research.