Global Trends and Research Hotspots of Interventions for Post-Stroke Cognitive Impairment: A Bibliometric Analysis from 2005 to 2025

Background: Despite the growing clinical importance of post-stroke cognitive impairment (PSCI), standardized and effective interventions remain limited, and no comprehensive bibliometric analysis has systematically mapped global research trends in PSCI interventions. This study aimed to outline the global research landscape and identify emerging trends and future research directions. Methods: Publications regarding clinical interventions for PSCI were retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection database from 1 January 2005 to 31 December 2025. Utilizing CiteSpace and VOSviewer software, this study conducted a comprehensive bibliometric analysis and visualization of the literature. The analysis encompassed research directions, publication trends, countries/regions, institutions, authors, source journals, and keyword characteristics. Results: After removing duplicates and applying strict inclusion criteria, 789 English-language articles and reviews were included. The overall findings indicated that annual publications on PSCI-related clinical interventions steadily increased, with rapid growth since 2015, reaching a peak of 130 publications in 2025. China produced the largest volume of publications (n = 358), with the USA acting as the core hub of international collaborative research. Chinese institutions dominated publication volume, but international institutions had greater research impact. The author network was large but lacked high-productivity core scholars, and cross-team collaboration remained limited. Highly cited studies mainly addressed cognitive assessment, pathological mechanisms, and clinical guidelines. Keyword analysis revealed that research hotspots have gradually shifted from functional evaluation to neural mechanism-based intervention research, and the standardization of outcome assessment has become a research focus. Conclusions: Global publications on PSCI interventions show a clear increasing trend, accelerating after 2015. Nevertheless, high-quality, multicenter randomized controlled trials are still insufficient. Future research should prioritize rigorously designed clinical trials to establish solid clinical evidence and formulate unified evaluation criteria for cognitive outcomes.