Mehmet Durğun1, Cemile Uyar2, Emine Kübra Dindar Demiray3, Alper Tahmaz4, Murat Emre Tokur5

1Department of Chest Disease, Bitlis State Hospital, Bitlis, Turkey
2Department of Infectious Disease, Evliya Çelebi Training and Research Hospital, Kütahya, Turkey
3Department of Infectious Disease, Bitlis State Hospital, Bitlis, Turkey
4Department of Infectious Disease, Antalya Training and Research Hospital, Antalya, Turkey
5Department of Anesthesiology and Reanimation, University of Health Sciences, Evliya Çelebi Training and Research Hospital, Kütahya, Turkey

Keywords: Co-citation, collaboration network, COVID-19, pulmonary embolism, VOSviewer

Abstract

Objectives: Recent publications on coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) suggest that pulmonary embolism (PE) plays an important role in mortality and morbidity. In this context, it is natural that studies on COVID-19-associated PE are increasing rapidly. This study aimed to evaluate the studies on PE associated with COVID-19, see the overall picture in accordance with scientific literature and guide future research.

Materials and methods: In this scientometric study, the Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC) was searched for all documents regarding COVID-19-associated PE. An Excel spreadsheet was applied to analyze the data, and the VOSviewer was used for visualization.

Results: A total of 159 records were retrieved in WoSCC. 41.5% (66) of the publications on the subject were original research articles. There were 151 articles in English, five in Spanish, two in German and one in Norwegian. A total of 66 articles were extracted by filtering the results. The mean citation number of these 66 articles was 2.17. Most of the articles were published in the United States of America (USA) (36, 22.64%), Italy (26, 16.35%), and France (20, 12.58%). Although most of the publications were from the USA, it was determined that the majority of citations were to articles published in France and Italy. It was determined that publications made in the journals Radiology, Circulation and European Heart Journal received the most citations when considering the distribution of articles with 10 or more citations. Content analysis showed that the majority of the publications were about the clinical features of the disease (71.2%), while the publications on other issues were limited.

Conclusion: Publications from countries other than the USA on COVID-19-associated PE are needed, especially on subjects other than clinical features.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declared no conflicts of interest with respect to the authorship and/or publication of this article.

Financial Disclosure

The authors received no financial support for the research and/or authorship of this article.