To perform a bibliometric analysis of research on artificial kidney for the purpose of exploring the status and trend of research in this field.

From the web of science core collection (WoSCC), artificial kidney-related literature from 2000 to 2022 were taken as samples, and the CiteSpace and VOSviewer softwares were applied to statistically analyze the number of publications, as well as country, institution, author, journal, and key words, etc.

A total of 382 articles related to artificial kidney were obtained after screening and de-duplication. The United States was the country with the largest contribution, and University of Twente was the leading institution. Artificial Organs was the most active journal in this field. Claudio Ronco was the author with the highest number of publications and ranked first among co-cited authors. Wearable artificial kidney, hemodialysis, peritoneal dialysis, and bioartificial kidney were the keywords that appeared with high frequency. Adsorption and removal were the main burst key words.

Annual publications related to artificial kidney have been increasing year by year for the last two decades. Wearable artificial kidney and bioartificial kidney were continuously popular research directions. The recent high interest in the function of artificial kidney to adsorb and remove metabolites suggested that it may be recent hotspots in this field.