Objective To analyze and discuss the research progress, hot spot, frontier and trend of the influence of high frequency hand hygiene on hand skin symptoms and hand microflora of health care workers by bibliometric analysis. Methods PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, Scopus, CNKI, Wanfang database, Chinese Biomedical Literature Service System and Cochrane Library were searched for related literatures on the effects of high-frequency hand hygiene on hand skin symptoms and hand microflora of health care workers from January 1st, 2014 to December 31th, 2024. NoteExpress 3.7.0.9296 and CiteSpace 6.1.R3 software were used to analyze the popular topics and generate a visual map to further refine research trends. Results A total of 1 607 articles were retrieved, and 126 were included after screening. The number of publications was relatively low before 2019, followed by a fluctuating upward trend from 2019 onward, reaching its peak in 2020. After 2020, the number of publications gradually declined and subsequently stabilized at a consistent level. Keyword co-occurrence analysis and keyword cluster analysis showed that the research focuses on the influence of high-frequency hand hygiene on hand skin symptoms and hand microflora of health care workers were hand eczema, hand sanitizer and protective equipment. The keyword burst analysis showed that the keyword with the strongest outbreak intensity was 2-propanol while the keyword with the longest outbreak duration was staphylococcus aureus. Conclusions In recent years, the influence of high frequency hand hygiene on hand skin symptoms and hand microflora of health care workers has gradually attracted attention. Current research highlights indicate that studies on different types of hand skin symptoms caused by high-frequency hand hygiene, the variation patterns of hand microbiota, the rationality of hand hygiene frequency in various medical work scenarios, and the development and application of protective hand sanitizer formulations or devices will become future research trends.
