Bibliometric analysis of status and trend of studies on self-management in patients with inflammatory bowel disease in China

Abstract

Objective To analyze the studies on self-management in patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) in China and its development status, and provide a direction and idea for the further development of studies in this regard. Methods Relevant literatures on self-management in IBD patients published since the database was established to May 2018 were retrieved from CNKI, WanFang Data, VIP and CBM. NoteExpress 3.2.0 and Excel 2016 were used to establish a database. External characteristics such as the year, journal and author as well as internal characteristics such as the research type, research subject and intervention measures were extracted from the literatures, and methodological quality assessment was conducted over the randomized controlled trails (RCT) . Results Totally 87 articles about self-management in IBD patients were included in this study. The number of publications rose perpendicularly from 2014 to 2018. Totally 52 articles (65.82%) were published on the top 5 journals in terms of the total number of articles. The top 3 areas in terms of the total number of articles were Jiangsu (42) , Zhejiang (10) and Guangdong (7) . There were 64 (73.56%) co-authored articles in total, and 29 articles (36.71%) were supported by a grant. There were various types of intervention studies, but there was huge difference between them in intervention time and frequency and there was no complete assessment tool for outcome indicators yet. The blind method and random distribution were not stated in any RCT, and their quality needed to be improved. Conclusions Currently, China's studies on self-management in IBD patients are still in a rapid development stage. Both core journals, forums and authors have taken form, but researchers still need to develop a complete specificity assessment tool, apply complete outcome assessment indicators, and enhance the scientific and preciseness of research design and implementation, thus improving the quality of literatures. Key words: Bibliometrics; Inflammatory bowel disease; Self-management; Methodological quality