Objective To explore the characteristics and development rules of published literatures on early gastric cancer, and to analyze the research frontiers and hotspots in this field.

Methods Taking "Early gas cancer" as the theme, the English literatures from January 2002 to October 2022 in the core collection database of Web of Science were retrieved. CiteSpace 5.7. R5 was to perform visualization analysis for literatures, the condition and distribution characteristics of authors, institutions and countries were studied, and the high-frequency keywords for researches in this field were explored.

Results A total of 3, 505 literatures were obtained, and the results showed that the countries with the great number of publications were South Korea and Japan; the institution with the highest number of publications was Yonsei University in South Korea, and that was the Japanese National Cancer Research Center in Japan and Shanghai Jiaotong University in China; the author with the highest number of publications was YONG CHAN LEE. Early researches related to early gastric cancer mainly focused on surgeries, and since then, researches on endoscopic treatment had gradually increased. At present, the researches focused on the clinical outcomes and long-term prognosis of endoscopic treatment.

Conclusion The early research hotspots of early gastric cancer mainly conduct around the safety and feasibility of surgical procedures and endoscopic treatment, and the corresponding clinical outcomes of endoscopic treatment have gradually become research hotspots. The current and future hotspots are the indications and outcomes related to endoscopic mucosal dissection in elderly patients as well as the application of artificial intelligence in early gastric cancer.