A total of 7,327 hits were obtained for the initial search before applying any filters. The top three publication languages were English (6581, 89.82%), Chinese (199,2.72%), and German (170,2.32%). In terms of the document type, 4869 (66.45%) were articles, 1340 (18.29%) reviews, 414 (5.65%) book chapters, 220 (3%) letters to editor, 159 (2.17%) conference proceedings, 112 (1.53%) note, 110 (1.5%) editorials, 59 (0.81%) short surveys, 36 (0.49%) books, 5 (0.07%) retracted papers and 3 (0.04%) erratum.

After applying filters of publication year, language, document and source type, 5637 studies were retained for further analysis. Of these, 5615 (99.61%) were journal articles and 22 (0.37%) conference proceedings. With respect to document type, 4321 (76.65%) were articles, 1190 (21.11%) were reviews, and 135 (2.39%) were conference proceedings.

As presented in Table 1, a total of 107 countries have been involved in research in LPR, with the United States of America (USA) (39.56%) contributing the maximum number of papers and collaborations. Figure 1 depicts the visual representation of collaborations between the countries. The size of the circle depicts the weight of the item, in this case, the number of collaborations and the thickness of the lines indicate the number of collaborations, with thicker lines indicative of more collaborations.

Visual representation of collaboration between countries

Table 2 depicts the top 10 universities/institutions contributing the most publications, along with the number and percentage of records. The Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA, emerged as the top contributor with 147 records, followed by Université de Mons, Mons, Belgium, with 130 records.

The top 10 journals publishing research on LPR have been tabulated in Table 3, along with details such as publisher and number of records. A strong preference towards publishing in journals that are focused on laryngology and voice and thereby having a higher viewership among laryngologists and speech-language pathologists (SLPs), can be noted. This is reflective of the relevance of LPR research to these two fields and the specialized nature.

A total of 159 authors were identified as contributors to the research in LPR. Table 4 depicts the top 10 contributing authors and their contributions. Dr Jérome R. Lechien emerged as the top contributor with 142 published works.

The distribution of growth of publications is presented in Fig. 2, which clearly depicts the continuous increase in research publications each year, especially after the early 2000s.

Growth in the number of publications from 1957 to 2024

A moderate rise in publications can be noted between 2000 and 2010, with publications increasing from 64 to 174 which was followed by a period of acceleration from 174 in 2010 to 336 in 2020. The period between 2020 and 2024 saw the most rapid rise in LPR publications, highlighting the heightened research and clinical interests. A closer look at the research output for the last 15 years also reveals increased interest in LPR, as seen in Fig. 3.

Research publications in the last 15 years (2010–2024)

The analysis of keywords and their co-existence is a crucial aspect of scientometric analysis and helps to identify key topics and potential areas for continuing research. A keyword co-existence analysis was conducted to identify the most common research areas and themes. Common keywords such as children, impedance, prevalence, pediatric, systematic review, meta-analysis, questionnaire, and child were excluded.

Co-occurrence for top 75 author keywords

Using clustering, the co-occurrence of keywords could be divided into five clusters depicted by red, green, blue, yellow and purple. The red cluster contained keywords related to ‘GERD, LPR and medical treatment’, while the green cluster contained keywords on ‘associated health conditions and symptoms’. The blue cluster included ‘voice and larynx-related’ keywords, while the yellow cluster included ‘diagnostic and assessment techniques’. The purple cluster was the smallest and included keywords related to the ‘digestive system’.