Robotic surgery in acute care, trauma, and critical care settings: a dual-dataset, data-driven bibliometric analysis of global research trends, emerging themes, and future directions.

backgroundRobotic technologies are increasingly explored in acute and emergency surgical contexts, offering potential advantages in precision, minimally invasive access, and perioperative management. Despite rapid growth, research addressing robotic acute care surgery (RACS) remains dispersed across specialties, methodological designs, and geographic regions. A comprehensive, data-driven synthesis of its intellectual structure, collaboration patterns, and thematic evolution has not been systematically undertaken. This study aimed to map global research activity in RACS, identify leading contributors, characterize dominant and emerging themes, and delineate conceptual transitions within the field.

methodsA bibliometric analysis was conducted using Scopus-indexed publications (1997-2025). Descriptive, collaboration, and thematic analyses were performed using Bibliometrix, VOSviewer, and CiteSpace to evaluate productivity trends, knowledge networks, thematic development, and emerging research fronts.

resultsA total of 1,172 publications demonstrated sustained growth, particularly after 2020. The United States, China, and Italy emerged as leading contributors, with Europe and North America accounting for the majority of productivity and citation impact. Collaboration networks revealed concentrated institutional hubs with relatively limited transnational integration. Bradford's Law identified a small core of specialized surgical journals responsible for approximately one-third of total output. Keyword co-occurrence analysis highlighted central themes around robot-assisted surgery, minimally invasive techniques, and perioperative outcomes, with bridging roles played by laparoscopy and comparative study designs. Thematic evolution analysis suggested a gradual shift from technology-focused foundations toward outcome-oriented evaluation, cost analysis, and acute-context applications. CiteSpace identified active research fronts in emergency surgery, risk assessment, propensity score matching, and randomized controlled trials, indicating increasing methodological sophistication.

conclusionResearch intersecting robotic surgery and acute care contexts has expanded substantially over the past decade, with growing emphasis on outcomes, comparative effectiveness, and economic evaluation. This study provides a structured intellectual and thematic framework, identifies gaps in international collaboration and high-level evidence generation, and outlines strategic directions for future multicenter and methodologically rigorous investigations.