ObjectiveTo understand current situation and development trend of dental unit waterlines (DUWLs) management at home and abroad.MethodsLiteratures related to DUWLs were retrieved from PubMed, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), WanFang Data, VIP Database, and China Biology Medicine (CBM), retrieval time was from the establishment of database to December 2017, bibliometrics was used to analyze the data.ResultsA total of 270 articles were included, there were 109 Chinese literatures and 161 English literatures; literatures were from 18 countries, the top 5 countries for publication were China (n=110), Britain (n=60), the United States (n=48), Poland (n=14), and India (n=10), accounting for 89.63% of the total literatures. The top three provinces for publication in China were Jiangsu Province (n=22), Guangdong Province (n=17), and Tianjin City (n=12), accounting for 46.79% of the total Chinese literatures. Seven highfrequency words have been obtained, hotspot of research was contamination and control of DUWLs. The first author published 1-13 articles, the core authors published at least 3 articles of this study, 18 core authors published 81 articles, accounting for 30.00% of the total number of articles.ConclusionDomestic research presents rising trend on the whole, but the extent of study still needs to be enlarged. Domestic research is relatively concentrated, but the core research has not yet been formed; hotspot of global study is explicit, but there is no unified management plan.