JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Virtual reality (VR) is a computer simulation technique that has been increasingly applied in pain management over the past two decades.

Objective:

In this study, we used bibliometric to explore literature in VR and pain control, in order to figure out the research progress and predict the future research hot spots.

Methods:

We extracted literature on VR and pain control from the web of science core collections, and bibliometric analyses were conducted. We analysed the publication and citation trends in past two decades，as well as the publication and citation analysis of different country/institution/journal/author. For references, co-citation and burst analysis were carried out. For keywords, co-occurrence, clustering, timeline view and citation burst analysis were applied.

Results:

Based on the 1176 literatures, we found that there was a continually increase in the publication and citation volumes, especially in the latest five years. The US was the representative country and Univ Washington was the representative institution, both of which having the most publications and citations. Furthermore, the most popular journal in this field was Burns, and Hoffman HG was the most productive author. “Virtual reality”, “burn”, “surgery” and “pain control” were the representative keywords.

Conclusions:

VR had been applied in varies of clinical situations for pain management, among which burns and pediatric surgery had achieved satisfactory results. We infer that VR will be extended to more clinical pain situations in the future. The new research hotspots will be developing the relative software and improving immersive experience of VR for pain control.