Trends in Photobiomodulation in Dentistry between 2018 and 2022: Advances and Investigative Agenda

Photobiomodulation (PBM) is a laser therapy used in medical sciences that acts by modulating biological processes as an alternative palliative treatment and as a mechanism that favours the immune response, among other functions. This study explores the trends in scientific production related to PBM in terms of publications, citations, impact, keywords and clusters and attempts to predict research trends. The data for this quantitative and qualitative bibliometric analysis were obtained from 608 scientific documents retrieved in November 2022, i.e., 123 from Web of Science and 485 from Scopus, that were processed in Excel to extract the information, and subsequently, productivity and impact were evaluated through eligibility. VOSviewer was used to determine associativity. The results of this study indicate that the scientific production on PBM follows the growth power law between the exponential and linear phases; additionally, the most relevant concepts in recent years have been identified in the research agenda: laser therapy, orthodontics, and dental pulp stem cells. This analysis shows that in the last 5 years, there has been growing interest in relation to PBM in dentistry as a complementary alternative to current protocols.