Objective To investigate the knowledge base and research focuses of stroke rehabilitation via a bibliometrical approach. Methods We searched the Web of Science and identified a total of 5 253 entries on stroke rehabilitation which were published from 2010 to 2015, The literature amount, country distribution, highly cited literature, and high frequency keywords of the 6 years literatures were recorded, and the retrieved literatures were then subjected CiteSpace visualization software analysis to draw the co-citation network clustering map and keyword co-occurrence graph. The basics and research focuses of stroke rehabilitation were analyzed. Results The publications on stroke rehabilitation increased year by year during 2010-2015. The United States, South Korea and Australia were the major countries for stroke rehabilitation research; and the literatures of China had a great increase. The highly cited articles of stroke rehabilitation mainly involved researches about Fugl-Meyer scale,MMSE scale,modified Ashworth scale and Barthel index rating scale and dysfunction recovery. High frequency keyword analysis showed that the researches mainly focused hemiplegia dysfunction in stroke rehabilitation and new techniques and ideas represented by optimized constraint-induced movement therapy and transcranial magnetic stimulation. Conclusion Researches on stroke rehabilitation is in a period of vigorous development, and increasingly more emphasis has been put on stroke rehabilitation research. The highly cited literatures and high frequency keywords can reflect the knowledge base and research focus of stroke rehabilitation, which can be used for further related research.