Traumatic brain injury (TBI) has become a major public health burden worldwide (Rubiano et al., 2015; Flanagan, 2015) and is estimated to remain one of the top three causes of injury-related death and disability until 2030 (Maas et al., 2022). There are 64–74 million new cases of TBI worldwide each year (Dewan et al., 2018), with 60,611 deaths in the United States of America (USA) and approximately 82,000 TBI-related deaths in Europe (Majdan et al., 2016). Among patients discharged from the hospital, up to 57% of moderate to severe TBI survivors remain moderately or severely disabled five years after injury and could have a significantly impaired quality of life (Maldonado et al., 2022). Since the 21st century, the field of TBI has received increasing attention from basic and clinical researchers, and a large number of studies have been conducted. However, the trends and priorities of TBI have not yet been fully described. Moreover, the true TBI disease burden may be considerably underestimated due to the discrepancy of TBI data sources worldwide, especially the absence of formal quantification in some low-and middle-income countries (Servadei et al., 2019). Therefore, there is still much to be known about TBI.

Bibliometrics is one of the most widely used methods for the overall analysis of publications on a specific subject. It can describe the objective and comprehensive process of publications and citations and is appropriate for both quantitative and qualitative analysis. Often used in combination with visualization tools, bibliometrics enables researchers to gain an overview of an advancing field, as well as helps them to derive new research ideas. There are currently several fields of neurosurgery that have been analyzed by bibliometrics, for example, glioma (Feng et al., 2019), moyamoya disease (Singh et al., 2022; Alkhaibary et al., 2021), and intracranial aneurysm (Kiraz et al., 2021). Although there have been a few bibliometric studies in the field of TBI, these previous studies merely focus on a specific population (Eagle et al., 2021a, 2021b; Karydakis et al., 2020) or a specific classification of TBI (Shi et al., 2021; Mojgani et al., 2022; Karagianni et al., 2022).

Our study provides a comprehensive integration of research in the field of TBI through the bibliometric approach to characterize the essential information of the literature. We highlight the most influential literature and research focuses, aiming to provide a comprehensive overview and new insights into the current state of TBI research. This study could also assist researchers and granting agencies in identifying priorities for future research efforts.