Global research trends and thematic evolution in neoadjuvant therapy and surgery for non-small cell lung cancer: a bibliometric and scientometric analysis.

Neoadjuvant therapy has become a cornerstone of curative-intent management for resectable non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), particularly since immune checkpoint inhibitors and biomarker-guided strategies entered perioperative practice. However, the field's global knowledge structure, collaboration architecture, and surgery-relevant thematic transitions have not been comprehensively mapped. Publications on neoadjuvant/induction/preoperative therapy and surgery for NSCLC (January 1989 to September 2025) were retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection, PubMed, and Wanfang. Bibliometrix, VOSviewer, and CiteSpace were used to quantify productivity and impact, map collaboration and coupling networks, and identify co-citation clusters and citation/keyword bursts. Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA; k=8) was applied to abstracts and keywords to characterize semantic domains and their evolution. A total of 1,512 publications were included. China and the United States were the dominant contributors and citation hubs. European countries showed higher proportions of multinational collaborations. Core journals formed a dual source landscape bridging thoracic surgery and oncology/immunology. Co-citation clustering showed strong structural validity and highlighted the rise of neoadjuvant chemoimmunotherapy, perioperative safety, and pathological response endpoints. LDA confirmed a shift from induction chemotherapy/chemoradiotherapy toward immunotherapy-centered perioperative paradigms and translational monitoring. Surgery-facing synthesis of representative landmark studies emphasized evolving emphases on complete resection, downstaging, and lung-sparing operative strategies. From January 1989 to September 2025, neoadjuvant NSCLC research transitioned from cytotoxic induction to immunologically driven, biomarker-informed perioperative paradigms tightly integrated with surgery. This integrated bibliometric-semantic framework provides a reproducible approach to monitor emerging fronts and to translate research signals into clinically interpretable questions for multidisciplinary perioperative decision-making.