A bibliometric study of the evolution, current status, and future trends of global vascular graft research from 1994 to 2025

Vascular graft transplantation is an important strategy for treating advanced cardiovascular diseases, restoring blood flow, and replacing diseased vessels. However, currently used autologous and synthetic vascular grafts still face several limitations, including limited availability of autologous vessels, thrombosis, intimal hyperplasia, infection, insufficient endothelialization, mechanical mismatch, and unsatisfactory long-term patency of small-diameter vascular grafts, which restrict their further clinical application. To systematically reveal the research foundation, hotspot evolution, and future trends in the field of vascular grafts, this study included 7034 relevant publications indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection from 1994 to 2025 as the research sample. CiteSpace, HistCite, and an alluvial generator were used to conduct co-occurrence analysis, co-citation analysis, burst detection, clustering analysis, and thematic evolution analysis. The results show that vascular graft research has generally maintained an active development trajectory and has gradually formed a relatively stable international collaboration network and knowledge structure. The research focus in this field has shifted from early studies on conventional vascular prostheses and material replacement toward tissue-engineered vascular grafts, small-diameter vascular grafts, surface functionalization, endothelialization regulation, antithrombotic and anti-infective properties, and clinical translation. Keyword clustering and burst analyses indicate that 3D printing/bioprinting, endothelialization, small-diameter vascular grafts, and stem cells have become important research hotspots in recent years. The limitations of this study mainly include the use of a single database, citation lag, and the lack of unified evaluation systems and sufficient clinical validation for some emerging technologies. In the future, vascular graft research should focus on three major directions: improving long-term patency, developing multifunctional bioactive interfaces, and promoting biomanufacturing and clinical translational validation. This study outlines the developmental trajectory of vascular graft research through an integrated bibliometric approach and provides a reference for the design and investigation of multifunctional, high-performance, and clinically translatable vascular grafts.