With the rapid development of innovative health technologies, evidence increasingly shows that overdiagnosis is harmful to a person’s health and that it is a global public health issue. This study aimed to analyze the current research status and corresponding foci in the field of overdiagnosis in Chinese and English databases using bibliometric methods.

A search was conducted in the English Web of Science Core Collection database and the Chinese China National Knowledge Infrastructure database for literature published from inception to 31 December 2021. CiteSpace (version 5.8 R1) software was used to perform bibliometric analysis on the countries, institutions, and keyword clusters of the included literature on overdiagnosis and to draw a corresponding visual knowledge map.

A total of 2,841 English and 43 Chinese publications were included. There was an increasing trend in the annual publication volume of both Chinese and English literature, with the publication volume of English research increasing significantly since 2010. In terms of countries and institutions, the top ten in English research on overdiagnosis were all from high income countries. The cooperation among these countries and institutions was close, unlike in China where the cooperation was relatively limited. Analysis of keyword clustering showed that the potential research foci for English literature on overdiagnosis included breast cancer, thyroid cancer, prostate cancer, lung cancer, and other tumor types, whereas the clustering in Chinese records was relatively scattered and mainly focused on overdiagnosis of thyroid cancer.

The research topics in the Chinese literature on overdiagnosis lag significantly behind English research. It is suggested that more research on overdiagnosis and related fields should be actively promoted and conducted in China in the future.