ABSTRACT
Physical rehabilitation is evolving day by day. In the same way, simulation in rehabilitation is increasing and has now become a cornerstone for rehabilitation programs. Increase in the number of new protocols, clinical methods, and treatment standardization, virtual reality is appearing as a new medium to deliver the simulation. Virtual reality gives the benefits of forming standardized treatment protocols on demand for various conditions repetitively with a cost-effective delivery system. This was an observational retrospective study. The PubMed database was used to obtain the available material related to virtual reality and rehabilitation and was searched using the same keywords. The articles were then sorted as the subject to the recent decade. The basic information was then obtained, which included timespan, sources of the document, average years of publication, document types we collected, and average citation per year per document. Analysis of the literature that was available online related to virtual reality and rehabilitation between 2011 and 2021 generated a list of 813 documents from 275 sources, of which 810 were from journal articles and 3 were book chapters with an average year of publication of 2.16. The highest number of publications was 480 in 2020, followed by 150 in 2019, 95 in 2018, and 28 in 2017. The annual growth rate percentage of scientific publications was 26.1%. Therefore, more studies should be performed on virtual reality.
Keywords: Physical rehabilitation, rehabilitation, virtual reality
Introduction
Virtual reality is said to be computer-generated and simulate formulated environments that act as immersive virtual experiences.[1] It has grown up in the digital healthcare industry very progressively. These computer-based or immersive-based educational modules are coming with great prognostic outcomes in various domains of education as well as medical healthcare.[2] Rehabilitation is the process of recovery from the point of trauma or injury to the return to normal daily activity.[3,4] Physiotherapy has played a very dominant role in the form of rehabilitation in the medical field.[5] Recent study works of literature have shown that there has been a great impact of virtual reality in the process of rehabilitation of any patient.[6]
The pace of evolving physical therapy rehabilitation trends is seen as tremendous progressing nowadays. The various and different needs of different populations, the variety of alternative clinical treatments available, the ethical nature of professional educators, and the versatile nature of healthcare systems are very drastically different today than a decade ago.[7] It computes the properties of research such as its impact, quality, implementation of its measure, and actual inculcation of its outcomes.[8] The qualitative statistical analysis of properties of research is supportive to represent the frequency of the publications in the same domain, the impact of scientific writings, also the flow of the writers toward the article.[9] Whether the publication is in an indexed journal or not is another main point of interest, reflecting the nature of distributed materials. PubMed is among the world’s ideal reference datasets for medical students, which is distributed free and trusted globally. PubMed is the key base framework for the vast majority of the bibliometric examines directed to date.[10] According to the Diary Reference Reports (JCR)-2019, the ISI PubMed has ordered 11,996 journals from around 81 countries. This study was led to see the number and patterns of materials associated with rehabilitation, virtual reality, and Colle’s fracture.
Methodology
The study was an observational retrospective study carried out with the help of an online search engine system. In 2021, the ISI PubMed data were retrieved to gather all the information regarding virtual reality in association with rehabilitation from 2011 to 2021. All publications associated with the requirements were searched using the keywords ‘rehabilitation’ and ‘virtual reality’. In the field of the document type, we selected all fields including articles, books, chapters, case reports, review articles, systematic reviews, meta-analyses, clinical trials, and RCTs with the range of publication years selected as 2011 to 2021, and with the writing language selected as English. The framework obtained included the type of documents, years of publication, names of journals, and citations per year.
The operational bibliometric analysis was then carried out by exploring all the available material with a knowledge mapping tool. The particulars on PubMed were used for executing the quantitative analysis, whereas R Studio and BibExcel were used for network analysis. To obtain co-occurrence and co-authorship, fractional counting was performed.
Results
Analysis of growth trends of publications
The PubMed ‘document type–Articles’ association with virtual reality and rehabilitation generated a list of 813 documents from 275 sources over a period from 2016 to 2021 [Table 1]. These included articles from different research areas such as Anatomy, Physiology, Cardiology, Oncology, Rehabilitation, Orthopedics, and Public and Environmental Health.
Table 1.
Year-wise number of publications
| Year | Articles |
|---|---|
| 2016 | 6 |
| 2017 | 28 |
| 2018 | 95 |
| 2019 | 150 |
| 2020 | 480 |
| 2021 | 54 |
The highest number of articles published was 480 in 2020, followed by 150 in 2019, 95 in 2018, 54 in 2021 until date, 28 in 2007, and 6 articles from 2016 [Table 1]. The yearly growth was 26.1% [Figure 1]. These publications showed a total of 2,561 authors, of which 11 were authors of ‘single-authored documents’ and 2,550 of ‘multi-authored documents’. Also, 18.6 was the collaboration index of virtual reality and rehabilitation in all published materials. Corresponding authors for about 120 articles were from the USA, the rest of the documents were from other countries, out of which 80 were from Italy, 50 each from United Canada and China, remaining from countries such as Ghana, Scotland, Indonesia, Spain, Brazil, Germany, and France [Figure 1].
Figure 1.
Year-wise growth of publications
The scientific analysis from the knowledge mapping tool of R Studio showed up the hierarchy of most relevant sources from various journals such as the Journal of Neuroengineering and Rehabilitation (JNnR), which included 82 articles, Journal of Frontiers in Neurology, which consisted of 34 articles, 32 articles were from PloS One, 31 from Sensors (Based on Switzerland), 22 from Frontiers in Psychology, 21 from Frontiers in Human Neurosciences, 19 from JMIR Serious Games and Journal of Clinical Medicine, and rest were from International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, Science Reports, Biomed Research International [Table 2].
Table 2.
Journals and their corresponding number of articles
| Sources | Articles |
|---|---|
| JOURNAL OF NEUROENGINEERING AND REHABILITATION | 82 |
| FRONTIERS IN NEUROLOGY | 34 |
| PLOSONE | 32 |
| SENSORS (BASEL SWITZERLAND) | 31 |
| FRONTIERS IN PSYCHOLOGY | 22 |
| FRONTIERS IN HUMAN NEUROSCIENCE | 21 |
| JMIR SERIOUS GAMES | 19 |
| JOURNAL OF CLINICAL MEDICINE | 19 |
| INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH AND PUBLIC HEALTH | 17 |
| SCIENTIFIC REPORTS | 17 |
| MEDICINE | 14 |
| BIOMED RESEARCH INTERNATIONAL | 12 |
| TRIALS | 12 |
| EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL AND REHABILITATION MEDICINE | 11 |
| ANNALS OF PHYSICAL AND REHABILITATION MEDICINE | 10 |
| BRAIN SCIENCES | 9 |
| FRONTIERS IN AGING NEUROSCIENCE | 9 |
| FRONTIERS IN NEUROSCIENCE | 9 |
| JOURNAL OF HEALTHCARE ENGINEERING | 9 |
| REVISTA DE NEUROLOGIA | 9 |
Discussion
From the study we carried out, we found a remarkable rise in the research and publications related to ‘virtual reality’ and rehabilitation in the recent few years ranging from 2016 to 2021, in which we obtained 813 articles. The annual growth rate percentage of scientific publication production was 26.1%.[1,2,3] The total number of citations average was more than 25 and was seen to drastically increase per year on articles on virtual reality and rehabilitation.[4,5,6] The average total citations for the literature published in 2020 was 33 and it further sharply increased.[7,8,9,10,11]
The list of all authors was sorted out and from the list of around 2,561 authors, the relevant authors were around 2,560.[12,13,14,15,16] The total list of authors showed that there were 11 articles by single authors and the remaining 2,550 articles were of multiple authors.[17,18] Also, 8.3 is the collaborative index of all authors for publications on virtual reality and rehabilitation all over the world.[19] The most relevant author had around 25 articles on his credits. The top citation of articles was 31, and per year, the average was 14.[20,21]
On this research’s list of top-most relevant sources, Journal of Neuroengineering and Rehabilitation (82 articles), Frontiers in Neurology (34 articles), Plos One (32 articles), Sensors (31 articles), Frontiers in Psychology (22 articles), Frontiers in Human Neurosciences (21 articles), JMIR Serious Games and Journal of Clinical Medicine (19 articles), International Journal of Research and Public Health and Scientific Reports (17 articles), Biomed Research Internationals and Trials (12 articles), European Journal of Physical and Rehabilitation (11 articles), Annals of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine (10 articles) and Brain Sciences, Frontiers in Aging, and Journal of Health Care Engineering and Revista Neurologia (9 articles).[22,23]
A total of 80 articles were found, especially on virtual reality and its advantageous factors.[24,25] The majority of articles were on the Rehabilitation and Quality of Life in relation to virtual reality and Colle’s fracture.[26,27] Nine articles were mainly focused on the educational module and the impact of virtual reality on rehabilitation and associated risk factors.[28] The role of virtual reality and techniques in the rehabilitation of stroke was described in 10 articles.[29]
The trend of the research and publications markedly increased in association with virtual reality and rehabilitation. It also showed that the use of virtual reality was more markedly used in rehabilitation and other digital healthcare.[30]
Conclusion
This study analysis reflects the historical research growth perspective of virtual reality in rehabilitation and digital healthcare and its progression of scientific publications in a well-known indexed database of PubMed. In the process of rehabilitation, educational module and digital healthcare delivery system are more in demand all over the world. The pattern of scientific publications is on increasing level with the improved scope of collaborative research and publications. Also, the increased citation ratio suggests that it will increase more in the upcoming years. The yearly growth of scientific production and publications is 26.1%.Therefore, more studies should be performed such as RCTs and clinical trials on virtual reality and rehabilitation.
Financial support and sponsorship
Nil.
Conflicts of interest
There are no conflicts of interest.
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