Scientometrics
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2022. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Clin Pediatr. May 9, 2022; 11(3): 307-320
Published online May 9, 2022. doi: 10.5409/wjcp.v11.i3.307
Global research production in neonatal abstinence syndrome: A bibliometric analysis
Sa'ed H Zyoud, Samah W Al-Jabi, Moyad Jamal Shahwan, Ammar Abdulrahman Jairoun
Sa'ed H Zyoud, Samah W Al-Jabi, Department of Clinical and Community Pharmacy, College of Medicine and Health Sciences, An-Najah National University, Nablus 44839, Palestine
Sa'ed H Zyoud, Poison Control and Drug Information Center, College of Medicine and Health Sciences, An-Najah National University, Nablus 44839, Palestine
Sa'ed H Zyoud, Clinical Research Centre, An-Najah National University Hospital, Nablus 44839, Palestine
Moyad Jamal Shahwan, Clinical Sciences, Ajman University, Ajman 2758, United Arab Emirates
Moyad Jamal Shahwan, Centre of Medical and Bio‑allied Health Sciences Research, Ajman University, Ajman 2758, United Arab Emirates
Ammar Abdulrahman Jairoun, Department of Health and Safety, Dubai Municipality, Dubai 67, United Arab Emirates
Author contributions: Zyoud SH designed the study, collected the data, analyzed the data, made major contributions to the manuscript’s existing literature search and interpretation, and drafted the manuscript; Al-Jabi SW, Jairoun AA, and Shahwan WM were involved in interpretation of the data, and made revisions to the initial draft; all authors provided a critical review and approved the final manuscript before submission.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors have no financial disclosures or conflicts of interest to declare.
PRISMA 2009 Checklist statement: The authors have read the PRISMA 2009 Checklist, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the PRISMA 2009 Checklist.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Sa'ed H Zyoud, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Clinical and Community Pharmacy, College of Medicine and Health Sciences, An-Najah National University, Academic Street, Nablus 44839, Palestine. saedzyoud@yahoo.com
Received: March 19, 2021
Peer-review started: March 19, 2021
First decision: May 6, 2021
Revised: May 21, 2021
Accepted: March 16, 2022
Article in press: March 16, 2022
Published online: May 9, 2022
Processing time: 413 Days and 20.7 Hours
Abstract
BACKGROUND

Recently, neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS) emerged as a significant global concern with a dramatic increase in healthcare expenditures. The incidence of the NAS has increased notably in the past decade and emergence as a global public health problem.

AIM

To evaluate the development and trend of global NAS research from 1958 to 2019 by bibliometric analysis.

METHODS

Analyzed aspects included publication output per year, language, document types, journals, countries/territories, h-index, authors, and top research priorities. The VOSviewer was used to determine the top research priorities, and trends, and to present bibliometric networks concerning various dimensions, such as co-authorship, authors, and countries.

RESULTS

A total of 1738 articles were retrieved in the Scopus database from 1958 to 2019. It was found that the great majority of the total NAS documents (n = 1295) were original articles followed by reviews (n = 268) and letters (n = 48). The most productive countries in the NAS field were the United States (n = 833), Canada (n = 112), the United Kingdom (n = 111), and Germany (n = 77). Treatment and hospital outcomes in NAS, evidence-based nurse-driven interventions for the care of newborns with NAS, and a systematic reviews and network meta-analysis for therapeutic approaches of NAS were found in recent years (after 2010), compared with terms such as pathophysiology, mechanisms of NAS, and signs and symptoms in the early years.

CONCLUSION

Treatment and pediatric outcomes and the effectiveness of pharmacological treatment may be frontiers in the NAS field, and continued efforts from researchers are needed in those topics.

Keywords: Neonatal abstinence syndrome; Bibliometric; Scopus; VOSviewer; Visualization

Core Tip: This bibliometric study extracts data on Neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS) research at a global level, aiming to provide the top-cited articles and top research priorities in NAS and to determine the most prolific countries, journals, and authors. This would enable scientists and clinicians interested in the NAS field to identify the most prevalent topics that have been used for increasing our understanding of NAS and provide a basis for future research. Treatment and pediatric outcomes and the effectiveness of pharmacological treatment may be frontiers in the NAS field, and continued efforts from researchers are needed on these topics.