To understand the development venation and current status of researches on quality of life (QOL) of breast cancer patients in China and abroad through a bibliometric approach, and provide references for researchers.

Literatures about QOL of breast cancer patients from January 1, 1900 to March 30, 2018 were searched from the Web of Science? citation database. The searching results were analyzed regarding the yearly article numbers and the frequency of citation by time, authors, journals, countries, institutions and study areas distribution using the Histcite software, statistics functions provided by the Web of Science? citation database, Microsoft Excel 2016, and the historiography in this field was plotted and analyzed.

A total of 18 526 articles were founded and the number of the papers on QOL of breast cancer increased steadily. The United States (US) has the highest number of papers and total local citation score (TLCS). China ranks 9th in the number of papers issued and 14th in TLCS, but the papers have been cited with lower frequency and less influence. Eight of the top 10 research institutes by the number of papers are from the US and 9 by the TLCS. China has no research institutions ranking into the top 10 by the number of documents or TLCS. The US has the highest numbers of authors among the top 10 by the number of papers(6) and TLCS(7). The US has 5 funding institutes publishing more than 100 papers on QOL of breast cancer. A total of 67 papers are funded by the China’s National Natural Science Foundation, ranking 18th in the world, but with low citation frequency (5.24) and h index (11). The researches on QOL of breast cancer patients have been developed into several research directions, the number of articles published in nursing is 1 597, ranking fourth, and the citation frequency of all articles is 15.57, ranking twelfth among the top 15 research directions by the amount of articles, which is relatively low.

The QOL researches of breast cancer patients have been developed fast, and the US plays a leading role in this filed. The researches on QOL of breast cancer patients have been developed into several research directions, in which researches on QOL related to nursing show relatively low quality. It still exists big gap between the researches in China and overseas. It is suggested that we should increase the scientific funding and strengthen the communication with the US and other leading countries, in order to improve the quantity and quality of papers on QOL of breast cancer.