To conduct a bibliometric and visual analysis of domestic and international research literature on helicopter medical rescue since 2004, to summarize the current status, hot issues, and future development directions of helicopter medical rescue research, and to provide a literature basis and new strategies for the development of helicopter medical rescue research in China.

The literature with themes related to helicopter medical rescue was retrieved from January 1, 2004, to July 31, 2024, with the type being journal articles. Chinese literature data were sourced from Wanfang, VIP, and CNKI databases, while English literature data were sourced from the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) and PubMed databases within the Web of Science (Core Collection). Citespace 6.1.6R visualization software was used for the analysis.

This study obtained 834 valid Chinese literature and 730 valid English literature. In the field of helicopter medical rescue, the Chinese literature had the highest publication volume in 2021, but shown a rapid growth trend from 2007 to 2021, with small peaks in publication volume in 2008, 2014, and 2019. The publication volume of English literature in this field fluctuated upwards from 2008 to 2015 and rapidly increased from 2017 to 2021. Over the past 20 years, a total of 322 domestic journals and 209 foreign journals had published literature on helicopter medical rescue, with 113 core authors from China and abroad participating in the research. Domestic research hotspots had shifted from initial topics such as astronauts, emergency aid, natural disasters, earthquake relief, and rescue systems to maritime search and rescue, medical rescue, and aviation transportation, which continued to the present. Foreign research hotspots had transitioned from the emergency medical treatment of trauma patients to retrospective studies of emergency medical services.

The development of helicopter medical rescue research is closely related to the occurrence and severity of disasters worldwide, which can be reflected by the changes in the publication volume of literature databases in China and abroad; the changes in research hotspots in this field are related to the technological progress and actual needs of the same period; the focus of China's helicopter medical rescue research is relatively dispersed, lacking research on a specific technology or a specific issue of helicopter medical rescue; bibliometric and visual analysis can scientifically reflect the current status and changes in hot issues of helicopter medical rescue research, and has intuitiveness and scientific nature, which is an effective method to promote the development of helicopter medical rescue research.