Evolution of acupressure research in maternal health

Abstract

Introduction: Pregnancy is often accompanied by various physical and psychological discomforts such as nausea and vomiting, back pain, anxiety, and sleep disturbances . Acupressure at the P6 point is effective in reducing nausea and vomiting in pregnancy, in addition to acupressure has the potential to improve sleep quality in pregnant womenObjectives: Data were obtained through a search on the Scopus database with the keywords "acupressure therapy" OR acupressure AND "pregnant women" OR pregnancy. Data collection was limited to September 5, 2024 at 19.31 WITA, so articles published after that time were not included. After the data was collected, the next stage was data cleaning using the OpenRefine application version 3.8.2 to ensure data quality and consistency before further analysis. The third stage involved data sharing and analysis using two software: R Studio and VOSviewer. R Studio was used for statistical analysis and more complex data manipulation, while VOSviewer 1.6.20 was utilized for network analysis and bibliometric mapping. The final stage was data visualization, which was performed using Tableau 2024.1 and VOSviewer 1.6.20. Tableau was chosen for its ability to create interactive and dynamic visualizations, while VOSviewer was used specifically to create bibliometric maps of keyword co-occurrenceMethods: The method uses a bibliometric analysis approach to evaluate the development and trends of research on acupressure in pregnancy. The research process consists of four main stages: data collection, data cleaning, data sharing, and data visualization .Results: The bibliometric data on acupressure in pregnant women analyzed covered a fairly long time span, from 1979 to 2024, with a total of 438 documents from 234 sources, with an annual growth rate of 7.42%. The increasing trend of acupressure research in pregnancy, one publication in 1979 and peaking in 2022 with 38 publications. The geographic distribution of publications showed a dominance of the United States with 102 articles, reflecting the substantial US investment in acupressure research in pregnancy. The most influential journals revealed the central role of the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews with 16 publications and 826 citations, this journal ranked first in both the number of publications and the impact of citations, followed by the "Journal of Midwifery and Women's Health" with 15 articles. The analysis of affiliates with the most publications showed that Western Sydney University was in the lead with 36 articles, followed by Shiraz University of Medical Sciences with 26 articles. Conclusions: These results indicate an increasing interest and relevance of this topic in the scientific community. Therefore, these findings indicate the potential of acupressure as a non-pharmacological approach to addressing various pregnancy problems, especially nausea and vomiting, which can provide an alternative or complement to conventional treatments.

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