This paper aims to make a systematic visualization analysis on literature relating to the treatment of diabetic retinopathy (DR) with Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), and explore the research hotspots and frontier trends in this field, thus providing references for future research. All literature relating to this field, which were published between the time when the databases were released and August 29th 2022, was retrieved from databases such as China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), China Science and Technology Journal Database(VIP), Wanfang Database and Web of Science Core Collection (WOSCC).Citespace software was used for visualization analyses on co-occurrence, clustering and citation burst of the keywords of papers published, and the category, authors, institutions, keywords of the papers as well as the research hotspots in the field. A total of 507 Chinese articles and 765 English papers in this field were obtained. Through analysis, it was found that there were 24 core authors in Chinese articles and only one in English articles. Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Nanjing University of Traditional Chinese Medicine each published 12 Chinese papers in the field, the most Chinese papers that an institution had ever published, while Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences published 22 English papers, the most English papers an institution had ever published. The co-occurrence analyses for keywords showed that 362 keywords were captured from Chinese articles, which included "traditional Chinese medicine" "review" and "deficiency of both Qi and Yin", etc. And a total of 583 keywords were captured from English articles, which focused on "oxidative stress" "medicinal plant" and "cell", etc. By clustering the keywords, seven clustering labels were formed using keywords identified from Chinese articles, including "#0 diabetic retinopathy" "#1 traditional Chinese medicine" and "#2 laser photocoagulation". And nine clustering tags were formed using keywords from English articles, including "# 0 diabetes mellitus", "# 1 diabetes retina" and "# 2 antioxidant activity". The citation burst analysis of keywords from Chinese papers showed that Chinese herbal drug was the keywords with the longest duration of research focus, and together with laser photocoagulation, constituted the topics in the earliest research of the field. While in English paper analysis, glycemic control was a topic with the longest research duration, and constituent was the subject in the earliest research of the field. Conclusions are as follows, the number of literature in the field of TCM treatment for DR has increased year on year. However, cooperation and interactions between researchers and research institutions didn’t look promising over the years, which apparently should be enhanced. Clinical treatments for DR and their mechanism has been the hotspots in this research field, with mechanism research, drug therapies and DR mortality as the trending research directions.

Huang Liqing, Wang Yang. Visualization Analysis of Research Hotspots and Trends in the Treatment of Diabetic Retinopathy with Traditional Chinese Medicine. Frontiers in Medical Science Research (2023) Vol. 5, Issue 7: 34-47. https://doi.org/10.25236/FMSR.2023.050706.

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