Abstract:

Objective To explore the current situation, hotspots and development trends in the field of tuberculosis patient visit delay and care system delay. Methods Using “tuberculosis delay” as the search term, the Web of Science core database was searched and preliminary analyzed in the field of tuberculosis delay from 1979 to 2019. A total of 551 related articles were retrieved, and editing materials, books, conference abstracts and other irrelated research were excluded and 427 documents available for analysis. CiteSpace software, visualization analysis was conducted on the countries, high-cited journals, high-frequency keywords, etc, and the importance of countries and high frequency keywords was measured by the index of centrality. Results The number of articles in the field of tuberculosis delay research was generally on the rise, from 1 article in 1979 to 40 articles in 2019. Among them, ≥15 papers were published each year from 2008 to 2019. The research countries of tuberculosis delay mainly concentrated in the United States, China, the United Kingdom and France, with 86 (20.1%, 86/427), 35 (8.2%, 35/427), 35 (8.2%, 35/427) and 21 (4.9%, 21/427), respectively. The top three central countries were the United Kingdom (0.41), the Netherlands (0.39) and the United States (0.24). According to the keyword cluster analysis, ‘delay of tuberculosis patients’ visit’, ‘delay of diagnosis and treatment of tuberculosis medical and health system’ and ‘gender difference of delay’ were three major research hotspots in this field, with the frequency of 29, 19 and 26 respectively. Conclusion The research on the delay of diagnosis and treatment of tuberculosis patients and medical and health system started late. The research heat in recent ten years is at a high level, and the developed countries are more central in this field.

Key words: Tuberculosis, Database, Bibliometrics, Data interpretation, statistical, Patient delay, Diagnosis and treatment delay