In recent years, with the increasing researches on massive rotator cuff tears, more and more attentions have been paid to the surgical treatment and biomechanics from scholars, and there are various detailed directions on research overviews of massive rotator cuff tears. However, as research in this area continues to accumulate, it is necessary to organize the literatures systematically using bibliometric methods.

To investigate the global research status and hotspots of massive rotator cuff tears and provide reference for further research with the analysis of CiteSpace software based on the database of web of science (WOS) .

By searching the database of Web of Science, relevant research literatures on the topic of massive rotator cuff tears were obtained. After data screening and extraction, descriptive statistical analysis was conducted on the included literatures at first, and then scientific metrology and visual analysis were conducted on the literatures using CiteSpace 5.7.R1 visualization software.

A total of 1 161 citing literatures and 12 044 cited literatures were included in the analysis. The period spans from 1994 to 2020, and the research literatures in the field of massive rotator cuff tears continued to increase, with nearly 1/3 of the published papers in the past five years. Journal of shoulder and elbow surgery, Arthroscopy - Arthroscopy and Related Surgery Journal and American Journal of Sports Medicine were the main journals that publish research in this field. The United States and Europe had outstanding contributions in the research of massive rotator cuff tears, but cooperations and exchanges between countries and institutions were not close enough. Eleven clusters were obtained by keyword analysis, and the main keywords were repair, integrity, tendon, muscle and follow-up. The surgical treatment and clinical efficacy in this field had always been the research direction of concern. A total of 13 clusters were obtained by citation analysis, indicating the research status at different times.

The researches in this field in recent 27 years can be summarized into three stages: the preliminary stage of surgical treatment, the maturity and popularization stage of arthroscopic technology, and the stage of surgical technique improvement, basic and clinical in-depth study. Currently, the research focuses on the surgical treatment strategy of massive rotator cuff tears, the long-term efficacy of surgery and the factors affecting the efficacy of surgery. In the future, there will be more breakthroughs in surgical techniques and surgical materials to treat massive rotator cuff tears.