Bibliometric Analysis of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Western Medicine in the Treatment of Obstructive Sleep Apnea Syndrome

Object: To study the research situation and direction and hot spots of Chinese and western medicine in the field of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) in the past 36 years by bibliometrics. Methods: The paper selected the key words related to surgery streatment, continuous positive pressure ventilation (CPAP) and traditional Chinese medicine treatment to obstructive sleep apnea. The CNKI, Wanfang, VIP and sinomed databases were subject searched respectively. The publication year, journals, authors, institutions, directions and emerging hotspots were measured and visualized by vosviewer 1.6.1. Results: Over the past 36 years, the number of relevant documents has riseen, and the research scale of surgical treatment is significantly higher than that of CPAP and traditional Chinese medicine. Since 2017, the literature on surgery and CPAP treatment began to decline, and the research hotspot of traditional Chinese medicine began to rise. From the perspective of publishing journals, there are obviously more small-scale teams formed for surgical treatment research, and different teams will also form larger author cooperation teams through mutual cooperation; however, there is less cooperation between CPAP treatment and TCM treatment research teams, and research hotspots are relatively scattered. Conclusion: In recent years, the surgical treatment of OSA has begun to enter a bottleneck period. Foreign countries attach great importance to evidence-based research such as follow-up, retrospective research, prospective research, randomized controlled trials, and systematic evaluation. At present, China lacks evidence-based research with large samples and multi centers, especially based on the special growth law of children, there is a lack of follow-up research on surgical resection of children with adenoid and tonsillar hypertrophy and the treatment of OSA with Chinese medicine, acupuncture and manipulation.