Intrauterine adhesion (IUA) was first proposed by Heinrich Fritsch in 1894 (1), and Joseph G Asher-Man published a series of papers in 1948 to name the disease and describing it in detail, so it is also called Asherman syndrome (2). IUA is a common intrauterine disease, referring to adhesion or even occlusion of uterine isthmus and cervical canal caused by various reasons (3–5). After the occurrence, it will cause serious harm to the reproductive function of patients (6, 7), and IUA patients may face serious obstetric complications (8), including placenta previa, placenta accreta and fetal growth restriction (9–12). In recent years, with the increasing number of intrauterine operations such as induced abortion and curettage, the incidence of intrauterine adhesion has also shown an increasing trend year by year (13, 14). Because of the high incidence and recurrence rate of the disease, the disease is still difficult to treat at present (15). Hysteroscopic adhesiolysis is the most effective method to treat intrauterine adhesion, however the rate of re-adhesion formation after surgery is still high (16). At present, the conventional clinical treatment treatment methods can't solve the serious intrauterine adhesion problem, which can only lead to limited effect and long treatment period (17).

It is essential to understand the research hotspots of intrauterine adhesion for studying effective treatment methods. Understanding the current research trends and hotspots will help medical workers keep up with the development and changes of professional research and provide reference for future professional research and high-quality practical work. Therefore, we use bibliometrics to help us understand the research focus and direction of intrauterine adhesion in the past 15 years.

Bibliometrics is a subject which uses mathematical and statistical methods to quantitatively analyze information (18, 19). It is a comprehensive knowledge system which integrates mathematics, statistics and philology that pays attention to quantification (20, 21). It uses statistical indicators to measure the achievements in this research field (22, 23). It can not only qualitatively and quantitatively analyze the contributions and cooperation of authors, institutions, countries and journals (24, 25), but also make an in-depth assessment of the theme trends and focuses in a certain field (26, 27).

Although bibliometric analysis has been widely used in many disciplines, it is rarely used in the medical field, especially in obstetrics and gynecology. Up to now, there is no comprehensive study on intrauterine adhesions by bibliometrics. This paper aims to use CiteSpace, a free computer program, to analyze the current research progress and future development trend in the field of intrauterine adhesions in recent 15 years from a longitudinal perspective, to help medical workers accurately grasp the research trends and hot spots.

In this paper, CiteSpace was used to retrospectively analyze 644 papers on intrauterine adhesion since 2006, and the publication time distribution, cooperation network of the main authors, research hotspots and development trend of the papers in the field of intrauterine adhesion were intuitively reflected by the visual analysis of the knowledge map.

It can be seen from the publishing trend of the article that the published volume is steadily increasing year by year, this shows that intrauterine adhesions are paid increasingly attention by medical workers, and China has made great contributions to the diagnosis and treatment of intrauterine adhesions. And through our analysis, we also find that not only the countries and regions involved in the research are relatively concentrated, but also the research institutions and researchers are relatively concentrated, and the centrality value is not very high.

According to the burst test of keywords, in recent years, we have paid increasingly attention to the repair and regeneration of endometrium, and stem cell therapy technology is also a hot research topic now. This will become the direction of our follow-up research. Based on the existing work, we will deeply explore the pathogenesis and diagnosis and treatment of intrauterine adhesions.

In summary, we have made a bibliometric analysis of the research hotspots and research reversals of intrauterine adhesions. Intrauterine adhesion has been paid close attention to by a wide range of medical workers, and increasingly clinical studies have promoted the diagnosis and treatment of intrauterine adhesion and the invention of new technologies. In the future, more multicenter in-depth research is needed to further provide evidence-based medicine research. This may have obvious guidance for the future work of researchers and medical workers. However, CiteSpace's analysis may be controversial and not deep enough. We will overcome these shortcomings by further evidence-based medicine analysis later.

The datasets presented in this study can be found in online repositories. The names of the repository/repositories and accession number(s) can be found below: http://login.webofknowledge.com.

D-DD designing this study and writing initial draft and revision. D-DD and QZ reviewing the literature and analyzing. Z-XH making figures and tables. M-ZZ rechecking the manuscript and putting forward suggestions for amendment. QZ revising language and content. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

This study was supported by Hubei Provincial Health Commission Joint Fund Key Project, with Grant No. WJ2019H500.

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.