Bibliometrics and visual analysis for clinical research on intervention of traditional Chinese medicine nursing technology on rheumatoid arthritis

Objective: The objective of this study is to explore the current situation, clinical research hot spots, and trends of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) nursing technology in rheumatoid arthritis (RA), to draw a panorama of clinical research, to provide the basis and clues for subsequent high-level evidence integration and further in-depth research. Materials and Methods: Seven databases including China National Knowledge Infrastructure, Chinese Scientific Journal Database (VIP), Wanfang Database, Chinese Biomedical Literature Database (Sino-Med), PubMed, Embase, and the Cochrane Library were searched. The bibliometric method and visualization software CiteSpace were used to conduct a multi-dimensional analysis of the included literature. Results: A total of 805 pieces of literature were included (of them, one was written in German and four in English), and the number of published literature showed an increasing trend year by year. There were only 30 (3.73%) pieces of literature published in nursing journals. The hot spots of the co-occurrence map were concentrated in: (1) the nursing of fumigation in RA; (2) the efficacy evaluation of TCM nursing technology on pain, joint malformation, and joint dysfunction caused by RA. The included literature themes focused on five TCM technologies: fumigation, moxibustion, acupoint patching, acupoint injection, and Chinese herbal soaking. The beginning year and strength in TCM fumigation were 2012 and 5.2, and those in moxibustion were 2011 and 3.38. Conclusion: The related studies are on the rise. It has entered the field of international readers with clear research hot spots. However, there are still shortcomings such as little literature published in Chinese nursing core journals, few non-Chinese-related documents, and a lack of international exchanges and cooperation. The current research hot spots in this field are TCM fumigation, and the cutting-edge trend of future research may be fumigation and moxibustion technology. It is suggested that further research can focus on evidence integration and original research on the self-optimization of these two techniques.