Frontier and hot topics in the application of hydrogel in the biomedical field: a bibliometric analysis based on CiteSpace.

Hydrogels are formed of crosslinked polymer chains arranged in three-dimensional (3D) networks. These chains have good water-containing capacity and are soft and malleable. Hydrogels have good biocompatibility due to their significant water content, flexible structure, and numerous holes. These characteristics make them analogous to biological tissues. Despite the publication of 8700 literature related to hydrogel biomedical applications in the past 52 years (1973 ~ 2024), studies on the use of hydrogels in biomedicine are few. To gain a comprehensive understanding of their current development status, research trends, and prospects in the biomedical application field, it is imperative to conduct a thorough retrospective analysis. In this study, we employ bibliometric analysis and CiteSpace software to quantitatively and visually analyze articles published in this field. Firstly, we provide a quantitative analysis of authorship and institutional publications over the past 52 years to elucidate the fundamental development status regarding hydrogel biomedical applications. Secondly, we did visual studies on terms that are high-frequency, explosive, keyword clustering, and so on, to understand the directionality and evolution of the main research hotspots during each period. Notably, our findings emphasize that fabricating hydrogels into wound healing-promoting dressings emerges as a prominent hotspot within the application field. We anticipate that this paper will inspire researchers with novel ideas for advancing hydrogel applications in biomedicine.