Research trends in peritoneal dialysis literature: a bibliometric and topic-modeling analysis of PubMed publications from 2016 to 2025.

Background

This study aimed to characterize the contemporary landscape of peritoneal dialysis (PD) research published between 2016 and 2025 using PubMed-indexed publications.

Methods

This bibliometric and text-mining study analyzed publications related to PD indexed in PubMed from January 1, 2016, to December 31, 2025. Author keywords were standardized using text normalization. Abstracts were preprocessed using tokenization, stop-word removal, and term normalization to improve topic-modeling performance. Topic modeling was then applied to the processed abstracts to identify latent research themes.

Results

A total of 9,620 PD-related publications were identified between 2016 and 2025, with the annual output increasing from 838 publications in 2016 to 1,128 in 2025. The mean number of author keywords per publication was 3.89±2.99. A keyword analysis identified hemodialysis, peritonitis, mortality, kidney transplantation, and coronavirus disease 2019 as the major research themes. Co-occurrence network analysis revealed three thematic clusters related to dialysis modalities, PD complications, and patient outcomes. Topic modeling identified nine major research topics, with "Catheter complications" and "Mortality and outcomes" remaining the most prevalent throughout the study period. Notably, the prevalence of "Home dialysis" increased from 14.4% to 19.8%, indicating a growing research interest in patient-centered and home-based treatment strategies.

Conclusion

Emerging interest in home dialysis, patient-centered care, and peritoneal fibrosis suggests a shift toward optimizing long-term treatment experience and technique survival.