Objective To visually analyze the relevant literature on the basic research of acute pancreatitis (AP) through bibliometric methods.

Methods The basic literatures published from 2012 to 2022 were retrieved and screened from the Web of Science database with the keywords "acute pancreatitis". Cite Space and VOS viewer were used to conduct co-occurrence network analysis on countries, research institutions, journals, authors, highly cited articles, highly cited authors, keywords, and the corresponding visual knowledge maps were drawn.

Results A total of 1 501 basic experimental articles of AP in Science Citation Index(SCI)were included for analysis. The annual number showed an overall upward trend. The top three most productive countries were China, USA and Germany. The top three most productive research institutions were Shanghai Jiao Tong University (106 articles), Sichuan University (75 articles)and Tongji University(45 articles). Pancreas(86 articles), Pancreatology(53 articles) and Plos One (46 articles) were the most productive journals. and the top three cited journals were Gastroenterology (1 013 times), Pancreas (914 times) and Gut (806 times). WANG X P (35 papers), WANG W X (33 papers) and SUTTON R (29 papers) were the top three authors in the number of published papers, and the top two cited papers were published in the Lancet and N Engl J Med respectively. Keyword co-occurrence network showed that thefocus of AP research was dysfunction, pancreatic acinar cell and mitochondrial dysfunction.

Conclusion Bibliometric and visualized analysis are intuitively displayed the current situation and development trend of the basic research field of AP.