• Qinghua Chen, Ya Wang, Shengwen Song, Guohao Xie, Baoli Cheng, and Xiangming Fang.
• Department of Anesthesiology, College of Medicine, The First Affiliated Hospital, Zhejiang University, 79 Qing Chun Road, Hangzhou, 310003, China.
• J Anesth. 2022 Apr 1; 36 (2): 210-220.

PurposeAged surgical patients are at a relatively higher risk of morbidity and mortality than younger surgical patients. The present study aimed to investigate the trends and research status of perioperative care for the elderly in the anesthesiology field.MethodsWe screened manuscripts published between May 31, 1991, and May 31, 2020, from the Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC). A clustered network was derived from all references cited in all of the included manuscripts. The top authors, journals, institutions, countries, keywords, co-cited articles, and trends were identified through bibliometric analysis and visualization using CiteSpace 5.8.R3 and VOSviewer 1.6.15.ResultsWe included a total of 1860 manuscripts published between 1991 and 2020. The number of publications on perioperative care for the elderly sharply increased from 2014 onwards. The United States of America and the University of California, San Francisco were the leading publication country (24.8%, 461/1860) and institution (2.6%, 48/1860), respectively. High-frequency keywords in cluster analysis included the type of anesthesia, postoperative pain management, postoperative cognitive dysfunction, and postoperative delirium, indicating postoperative cognitive dysfunction and postoperative delirium remain the focus areas for research in perioperative care for the elderly. Organ function protection was the new research focus according to the burst detection analysis of top keywords.ConclusionsThe number of studies on perioperative care for the elderly has increased apparently worldwide. Postoperative cognitive dysfunction and postoperative delirium remain primary research focus areas. Organ function protection appears to be the second most highly researched topic in the perioperative care for the elderly.© 2022. The Author(s) under exclusive licence to Japanese Society of Anesthesiologists.

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