Post-stroke limb motor dysfunction and functional recovery: A bibliometric analysis of research trends and hotspots

Abstract

Post-stroke motor dysfunction severely affects patients’ quality of life and independence. Although post-stroke rehabilitation has been widely studied, no detailed analysis of emerging trends in limb motor dysfunction and functional recovery has been performed. To address this gap, our research team conducted a bibliometric analysis of the research landscape, evolutionary path, and interdisciplinary convergence of hotspots in the field of post-stroke limb motor dysfunction and functional recovery from 2016 to 2025. A total of 3173 articles from the Web of Science Core Collection database were included in the bibliometric analysis, revealing that this research field is in a period of rapid expansion. Keyword analysis indicated that emerging technology-assisted rehabilitation has become the dominant trend. Currently, robot-assisted training and virtual reality are the two major technological keywords, and most related studies focus on upper limb rehabilitation. Burst literature analysis revealed that research hotspots in this field have gone through three phases: the early phase (2014–2016): evidence synthesis and clinical guideline development; the middle phase (2017–2019): technological innovation (robotics and virtual reality) and standardized assessment; and the recent phase (2020 to present): neuromodulation (brain–computer interface and non-invasive brain stimulation), global disease burden, and public health policy. Analysis of the highly cited literature revealed the evolutionary path from evidence-based foundations to technological advancement and, finally, to public health applications. Highly cited studies have focused on comparative efficacy, robot-assisted training, brain–computer interfaces, vagus nerve stimulation, and the prediction of rehabilitation outcomes, which form the current mainstream research directions. Upper limb dysfunction has become the core of current research due to its significant impact on daily living and the maturity of plasticity models, whereas research on lower limb recovery is relatively underdeveloped. It should be noted that surgical interventions, such as contralateral C7 nerve crossover, selective neurotomy, and tendon transfer, offer unique therapeutic value for patients with post-stroke chronic spasticity and motor imbalance; however, surgical interventions are still a niche area within the overall field of research and hold great potential for interdisciplinary integration. Taken together, the data above indicate that research on post-stroke motor disorders and functional recovery is under rapid development and that the research focus has shifted from the integration of evidence-based medicine to the deep integration of neuromodulation and intelligent rehabilitation. Surgical interventions, as important adjuncts, have unique clinical value in specific patient populations. In the future, interdisciplinary collaboration among rehabilitation medicine, neurosurgery, and orthopedics should be strengthened to increase the integration of multimodal data and the development of precision rehabilitation strategies, thereby comprehensively improving therapeutic outcomes for motor function recovery in stroke patients.