To visualize and analyze the literature related to the treatment of extremity lymphedema (EL) over the years 2012 to 2022 and to explore future research directions.

Taking "lymphedema" and "treatment" as the themes, the study searched the Chinese and English literature related to EL treatment reported by Chinese scholars from 2012 to 2022 in Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) and Web of Science (WOS) databases, and used CiteSpace software to visualize the literature, draw maps of authors, research institutes, keywords, etc., and carry out clustering and emergent word analysis on the keywords.

A total of 1 007 Chinese articles with 16 core authors and 236 English articles with 8 core Chinese authors were included. The author with the largest number of publications in Chinese was Liu Ningfei from the Ninth People’s Hospital of Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine (16 articles), and the author with the largest number of publications in WOS was Cheng Ming-Huei from Chang Gung Memorial Hospital Lin Kou Campus (Taiwan Province of China) (33 articles). The institution with the largest number of articles in Chinese was Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center (16 articles), and the institution with the largest number of articles in English was Chang Gung University (Taiwan Province of China) (45 articles). "Breast cancer" "nursing care" and "quality of life" were the top 3 keywords in CNKI ; "breast cancer" "diagnosis" and "lower extremity" were the top 3 keywords in WOS. Cluster analysis of the keywords showed that 16 clusters in CNKI and 11 clusters in WOS covering evaluation indexes, treatment method and mechanism studies. The result of CNKI keyword emergence analysis showed that the top 10 emergent keywords were "postoperative breast cancer" "upper limb" "rehabilitation" "nursing care" "rehabilitation therapy" "intramuscular effect patch" "acupuncture therapy" "cervical cancer" "upper limb function" "lymphatic drainage". The result of WOS keyword emergence analysis showed that the top 10 emergent keywords were "prevalence" "extremity lymphedema" "therapy" "postmastectomy lymphedema" "transplantation" "cancer" "flap transfer" "mechanism" "surgical treatment" "reconstruction" .

Surgical treatment, preventive nursing and lymphangiogenesis are the key research directions of EL treatment. Both traditional Chinese medicine and Western medicine have their own advantages in the treatment of EL, and the combination of traditional Chinese medicine and Western medicine can play a better role in the treatment. Multidisciplinary team can develop personalized solutions for patients.

Lymphedema; CiteSpace software; Visualization analysis; Knowledge graph; Treatment