The Development of Ventricular Assist Devices over the Past 30 Years: A Bibliometric Analysis

Background: A large gap exists between the needs of patients with end-stage heart failure and the number of gold-standard heart transplants. Over the past 30 years, a revolutionary treatment strategy using ventricular assist devices (VADs) has rapidly developed and become widely used in clinical practice. However, few analyses have assessed the application and publication trends in the VAD field. Method: We used the Web of Science core collection to identify VAD research published between 1992 and 2022. We performed analysis and data visualization with CiteSpace, Scimago Graphica, and VOSviewer. Results: We identified 13,274 articles published in 1129 journals, describing work from 6351 institutions in 86 countries. Among them, the United States contributed the most to VAD research, and almost all the top ten authors and institutions contributing to VAD research were from the United States. Conclusions: In the past 5 years, VAD research has focused on right heart failure, outcomes, effects and risk factors, societies of surgeons, and clinical guidelines. Because of the large number of patients with heart failure, we expect VAD development to peak in the next decade.