Pain
Jennifer Dens Higano, MD, MPP
Senior Associate Consultant, Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation
Mayo Clinic
Rochester, Minnesota, United States
Karen Andrews, MD
Consultant, Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation
Mayo Clinic
Rochester, Minnesota, United States
Clay Smither, MD
Chair and Consultant, Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation
Mayo Clinic
Rochester, Minnesota, United States
Phantom limb pain (PLP) is present in 40-80% of patients with limb loss. PLP can be debilitating and can hinder prosthetic use. Etiology of PLP remains unclear and likely multifactorial. Proposed and existing treatments include medications, surgeries, neuromodulation, and rehabilitation. Techniques to prevent PLP through medications and surgical modifications continue to undergo evaluation. Bibliometric analysis statistically evaluates citations, abstracts, and keywords to identify trends, collaborations, and impacts within a research field. No bibliometric analysis on PLP after amputation exists.
Design:
Web of Science Core Collection database was used for initial search of published articles in English related to phantom limb pain after amputation for all database years (1975-2025). Titles and abstracts were subsequently screened for inclusion. This resulted in 646 total publications. Analyses were completed in Excel, Web of Science, and R using Biblioshiny.
Results:
Articles on PLP were published in 279 journals by 2,274 authors at 1,009 institutions in 55 countries. On average each article had 4.85 coauthors; 50 articles (7.74%) were single author. 21.05% of articles having international coauthorship. Peak publication year was 2024 with 47 publications; publications have, on average, been increasing over time. Of the top ten journals publishing on PLP, six were pain, three were rehabilitation, and one was neurological; these journals published 24.1% (n=156) of articles. Three topical co-occurrence networks were identified: neuropathic pain/pain interventions, cortical reorganization and brain-based interventions, and descriptive/epidemiologic topics. The 646 articles in the dataset have been cited 28,721 times by 10,986 articles with an average citation count of 44.46 and collective H-index of 88.
Conclusions:
Publications on PLP after amputation are increasing and focus on three broad topics. The network of authors is dense and interconnected. Further investigation into developing themes will be beneficial to identify new and emerging treatment and prevention methods for PLP.
