Objective To analyze the research focuses and frontiers of exercise intervention on breast cancer patients.

Methods We collected 7134 pieces of literature about exercise intervention on breast cancer in the Web of Science Core Collection database in recent five years, and CiteSpaceⅤ was used to conduct visual knowledge map analysis and generate a visual map including discipline distribution, country or region distribution, keyword co-occurrence or highlighting, keyword timeline maps, etc.

Results In recent years, the domain of exercise intervention on breast cancer has achieved rapid development. The disciplines were mainly cardiovascular system and cardiology as well as oncology. Countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom and Italy ranked in the first places with regard to the number of papers. The body mass index and the quality of life betweeness centrality were respectively 0.81 and 0.52, which played an important role in the knowledge map. The keyword highlighting map and the timeline map showed that cardiac toxicity was a research focus in this domain.

Conclusion The research focuses of exercise intervention on breast cancer are mainly cardiovascular and related fields, in a rapid development stage. Future research directions include weight control, quality of life and cardiac toxicity.