Objective To summarize the research hotspots in the field of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) nursing for pelvic inflammatory disease. Methods Based on databases such as CNKI, Wanfang Data, and Juhe Biomedical Knowledge Service Platform, literatures on TCM nursing for pelvic inflammatory disease published from January 1996 to April 2024 were retrieved, and a visualized bibliometric analysis of the included literatures was performed by the CiteSpace software. Results A total of 876 literatures were included, demonstrating an overall fluctuating growth trend in annual publication volume, with the highest number of publications observed in 2020. Results of co-occurrence keyword and high-frequency keyword analyses showed that among the 20 most frequently occurring keywords, 9 had a betweenness centrality ≥0.1. High-frequency keywords mainly covered two aspects: TCM nursing methods and nursing quality. TCM nursing methods included keywords such as health education, emotional nursing, and syndrome differentiation-based nursing; nursing quality included keywords such as quality of life, perioperative period, gastrointestinal function, and complications. Keyword clustering analysis results showed the clustering order as follows: TCM nursing, nursing, health education, TCM, syndrome differentiation-based nursing, treatment effect, gynecology of TCM, gastrointestinal function, clinical symptoms, acupoint application, and retention enema. The clustering effect had a Q value (modularity) of 0.58 and an S value (silhouette coefficient) of 0.87. Keyword burst analysis showed that from 2010 to 2015, researches in the field of TCM nursing for pelvic inflammatory disease mainly focused on TCM nursing and effect evaluation during the perioperative period of pelvic inflammatory disease; from 2016 to 2018, literatures on nursing protocols and health education for pelvic inflammatory disease began to increase; after 2019, researchers started to pay attention to the combined application of multiple TCM nursing techniques and the impact of emotions on pelvic inflammatory disease nursing; from January 1996 to April 2024, the top 3 keywords in burst strength were syndrome differentiation-based nursing, quality of life, and acupoint moxibustion. Results of keywords timeline analysis showed that TCM nursing, nursing, and health education had the longest research time span, with related studies on TCM nursing for pelvic inflammatory disease emerging around 1996 and continuing to the present; keywords such as syndrome differentiation-based nursing and retention enema began to appear around 2005 but concentrated from 2013 to 2017. Conclusion TCM nursing for pelvic inflammatory disease has gradually gained attention and development. The basic concept of syndrome differentiation-based nursing has consistently permeated the entire evolution of research related to TCM nursing for pelvic inflammatory disease. The combined application of multiple TCM nursing techniques in pelvic inflammatory disease nursing has shown good research development. Further research can be conducted on the construction of an evaluation system and the development of evaluation tools for TCM nursing in pelvic inflammatory disease.  

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