Bibliometric analysis of early childhood stuttering (1975-2024)

Introduction: suttering in early childhood affects 5 % of children, with a prevalence of 1 % in the general population. Although most recover spontaneously, 20 % may persist into adulthood, negatively impacting their quality of life. The objective of this research is to analyze the evolution of research on stuttering in early childhood through publications indexed in the Web of Science (WoS) database between 1975 and 2024.Methods: a bibliometric analysis of 1 130 articles extracted from WoS was carried out using the VOSviewer software. Publications, citations, thematic categories, authors, keywords, institutional collaborations and the most relevant countries were analyzed.Results: between 1992 and 1995, there was the greatest increase in publications in the area with 44 articles. The peak of citations was in 2021 with 1 704 citations. The United States leads the production with 581 articles, followed by Australia with 128 articles. The most frequent keywords were "stuttering", "speech" and "children".Conclusions: there is a sustained growth in the number of publications in the area, which has also begun to diversify in recent years. There is an inequality in production within the area, since it is dominated by publications from a limited group of countries.