A growing field with separate tracks
Research on Y-90 radioembolization is expanding at a reported rate of 8% a year, but the field is not organized around one question. A bibliometric analysis found distinct lines of work around glass and resin microspheres and around primary and metastatic liver disease. The aim was to map how the research has evolved and how those themes differ, rather than to test a treatment in patients. The study did not report an uncertainty interval or inferential test for the growth figure.
That map covered 2,002 publications. The authors retrieved articles and reviews from the Web of Science Core Collection for the period from 2005 to 12 July 2024. CiteSpace, VOSviewer and Bibliometrix were used for visualization, while the comparisons by microsphere type and disease context were narrative classifications.
The field has a clear geographic center
Geographically, the literature had a clear center. Scientific output and collaboration were concentrated in North America and Western Europe. The supplied analysis gives no regional counts or proportions, so it identifies the main centers of activity without showing how large the difference was between them.
Another signal came from co-citation, the pattern of papers being cited together. The co-citation core emphasized foundational outcomes in hepatocellular carcinoma, a primary liver cancer, alongside international recommendations. The analysis does not quantify that co-citation structure.
Different themes for glass and resin
The glass-microsphere literature clustered around hepatocellular carcinoma and segmentectomy, a treatment focus on a defined section of the liver. That result shows where publications were concentrated; it is not a comparison of clinical outcomes between glass and resin microspheres. The report does not give the size of the glass subgroup or the threshold used to identify its cluster.
Resin-microsphere publications pointed elsewhere. They concentrated on colorectal liver metastases, meaning colorectal cancer that has spread to the liver, and on randomized or combination regimens. The report does not provide a resin subgroup count or a cluster threshold, so the pattern describes the literature's emphasis rather than the relative effectiveness of any regimen.
Disease context changes the focus
The split was not only between materials. Literature on primary disease emphasized survival and transplant pathways. Literature on metastatic disease focused on local control within multimodality care, meaning care that combines several treatment approaches. These are thematic differences in a publication corpus, not quantified clinical comparisons; the supplied analysis does not report how many papers belonged to either disease group.
A map, not a clinical verdict
The authors describe the field as showing substantial growth and thematic shifts and call for randomized trials and long-term outcome studies. That conclusion is a call for stronger clinical evidence, not a finding that the bibliometric analysis itself measured patient outcomes. The article contains no studies involving human participants or animals, and its 2,002-publication corpus therefore maps research activity rather than patient results.
The source also limits the map. The search covered the Web of Science Core Collection and the stated retrieval window, while the material and disease groupings were classified narratively. The supplied report does not provide the exact search strategy, screening flow, bibliometric thresholds, sensitivity analyses or inferential uncertainty. Those limits make the study useful for seeing where attention has gathered, but not for deciding whether glass or resin is better or whether either research pattern improves care.
The work was funded by the Senior Medical Talents Program of Chongqing for Young and Middle-aged and the Informatization Teaching Reform Project of Chongqing Southwest Hospital, project 2025BKC16. The authors declared no conflict of interest.
Paper data and sources
Original title: Evolving trends in yttrium-90 radioembolization research: a comprehensive bibliometric study.
Authors: Tao Pan, Yuhang Wang, Hongmin Li et al.
Journal/Repository: Annals of nuclear medicine
Status: Peer-reviewed
First online: 2026-08-21
DOI: 10.1007/s12149-026-02273-2
Original paper · Full text