A bibliometric and visualized analysis of early mobilization in intensive care unit from 2000 to 2021.

Background: Early mobilization in the intensive care unit (ICU) is a hotspot. This study aims to provide a bibliometric perspective of the progress in this field.

Methods: We extracted publications on ICU early mobilization published in the Web of Science Core Collection database from 2000 to 2021. VOSviewer was used to construct co-occurrence and co-citation relationships for authors, references, and keywords; Citespace was used to visualize knowledge mapping of subject categories, countries, and keywords with the strongest citation bursts.

Results: A total of 4,570 publications were analyzed, with a steady increase in publications in the field of ICU early mobilization. From a macro perspective, research on ICU early mobilization involves multidisciplinary involvement, including critical care medicine, neurology, and nursing; as for the meso perspective, the United States is the major contributor. Needham DM and Schweickert WD are the key researchers in this field. Moreover, the core journal is , with the most publications and citations. The microscopic level, dominated by references and keywords, illustrates that the hotspot and frontier of research on ICU early mobilization focus on ICU-acquired weakness, delirium, the prognosis of critical illness, and severe COVID-19.

Conclusion: This study presents a research landscape of ICU early mobilization from different perspectives. These findings will contribute to a better understanding of the current state of research in critical care medicine and provide the available information for future research ideas.