Emerging Trends on the Growing Rods in Scoliosis in the Last 20 Years: A Bibliometric Analysis from 2003 to 2024.

BACKGROUND

Growing rods is a distraction-based, growth-friendly method that is commonly used in the treatment of scoliosis.

METHODS

Studies on growing rods in scoliosis published from 2003 to 2024 were retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection. VOSviewer, Microsoft Excel, and CiteSpace were applied for data analysis.

RESULTS

We identified 742 publications on growing rods in scoliosis. The annual number of publications grew steadily. The United States was the most prolific country. University of California, San Diego was the most productive institution. Behrooz A. Akbarnia ranked first among authors regarding the number of articles and citations. The Journal of Pediatric Orthopedics was the most prolific journal. The research topics can be divided into 3 clusters as follows. 1) Complications of growing rods and magnetically controlled rods in early onset scoliosis; 2) growing rods in congenital scoliosis, focusing on pulmonary function and thoracic insufficiency syndrome; and 3) scoliosis management. The frontier directions of current research included magnetically controlled growing rods and growing rods fusion.

CONCLUSIONS

This study drew a knowledge map of growing rods in scoliosis over the past 2 decades. The changes in research hotspots and current research directions have been summarized. The high costs and limited access to growing rods methodology in less-developed regions highlight the economic and technical challenges of globalizing these advanced treatments.