A bibliometric analysis of the research hotspots in the applications of internet searches in breast cancer patients (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Women diagnosed with breast cancer need information and support to cope with their illness. The internet has become a powerful way to disseminate health information. The aim of this study is to investigate the research hotspots in the field of the application of the internet in breast cancer patients for information exchange and dissemination. OBJECTIVE Papers published between 1998 and 2016 with major Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) from related citations were downloaded from the PubMed database. METHODS Terms appearing in more than 10 papers were kept as high frequency MeSH terms. Terms that appeared in more than 10 papers were considered high frequency MeSH terms and were retained. A co-occurrence matrix was built with co-occurrence times between each pair of high frequency MeSH terms. These terms were then clustered into four groups. Papers that fell outside of our initial search timeline (published in 2017-2018) were classified into one of the 4 existing clusters of hotspots to predict the emerging trends of the field. RESULTS A total of 459 MeSH terms appeared 1594 times in 313 citations and 26 MeSH terms presented more than 10 times in 809 citations. We clustered these high frequency MeSH terms into 4 groups. Topics of those 18 new papers include online support group related, diagnosis, treatment and prevention, but showed a significant content expansion of each cluster. CONCLUSIONS A total of 459 MeSH terms appeared 1594 times in 313 citations and 26 MeSH terms presented more than 10 times in 809 citations. We clustered these high frequency MeSH terms into 4 groups. Topics of those 18 new papers include online support group related, diagnosis, treatment and prevention, but showed a significant content expansion of each cluster.