Research trends and performances of breast reconstruction: a bibliometric analysis

Abstract

Background: The need for postmastectomy breast reconstruction surgery has increased dramatically, and significant progress has been made both in implant and autologous based breast reconstruction in recent decades. In this paper, we performed a bibliometric analysis with the aim of providing an overview of the developments in breast reconstruction research and insight into the research trends. Methods: We searched the Science Citation Index Expanded database and the Web of Science Core Collection for articles published between 1991 to 2018 in the topic domain, using title, abstract, author keywords, and KeyWords Plus. Four citation indicators TCyear, Cyear, C 0 and CPP year were employed to help analyse the identified articles. Results: The number of scientific articles in breast reconstruction in this period steadily increased. It took most articles nearly a decade to hit a plateau in terms of citation counts. Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Annals of Plastic Surgery, and Journal of Plastic Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgery published the largest number of articles on breast reconstruction. Nine of the top ten most prolific publications were based in the USA. The research highlights related to breast reconstruction were implant-based breast reconstruction, deep inferior epigastric perforator (DIEP) flap breast reconstruction, and superficial inferior epigastric artery (SIEA) flap breast reconstruction. Conclusions: This bibliometric analysis yielded data on citation number, publication outputs, categories, journals, institutions, countries, research highlights and tendencies. It helps to picture the panorama of breast reconstruction research, and guide the future research work.

A historical review and bibliometric analysis of research on fracture nonunion in the last three decades

“…Search power was enhanced using KeyWords Plus which provided additional search terms extracted from the titles of papers cited in each new article listed in Current Contents [5]. As the documents that can only be found by KeyWords Plus are irrelevant to the search topic [6], those were excluded. To eliminate inherent bias of using Web of Science Core Collection for bibliometric analysis and avoid introducing unrelated publications, the 'front-page' filter was used to cover only the documents in which search keywords are included in the title, abstract and author keywords [6].…”

“…As the documents that can only be found by KeyWords Plus are irrelevant to the search topic [6], those were excluded. To eliminate inherent bias of using Web of Science Core Collection for bibliometric analysis and avoid introducing unrelated publications, the 'front-page' filter was used to cover only the documents in which search keywords are included in the title, abstract and author keywords [6]. By using advanced search with terms of TI (title), AB (abstract) and AK (author keywords), 10,064 documents including 8976 articles having the search keywords in their 'front page' from 1990 to 2019 were defined as nonunion publications.…”

“…By using advanced search with terms of TI (title), AB (abstract) and AK (author keywords), 10,064 documents including 8976 articles having the search keywords in their 'front page' from 1990 to 2019 were defined as nonunion publications. Subsequently, the records were introduced into spreadsheet software (Microsoft Excel 2016, Microsoft Corporation™), and additional coding was performed for analysis [6]. The journal impact factor (IF 2019 ) for each journal was obtained from the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) in 2019.…”

“…The journal impact factor (IF 2019 ) for each journal was obtained from the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) in 2019. For accuracy and simplicity, affiliations of England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales were reclassified as United Kingdom (UK) [6], whereas affiliations in Hong Kong prior to 1997 were included under the heading of China [6]. Affiliations from the former USSR were checked and reclassified as being from Ukraine and Russia, respectively, whereas those from Serbia and Montenegro were grouped as Serbia [6].…”

“…For accuracy and simplicity, affiliations of England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales were reclassified as United Kingdom (UK) [6], whereas affiliations in Hong Kong prior to 1997 were included under the heading of China [6]. Affiliations from the former USSR were checked and reclassified as being from Ukraine and Russia, respectively, whereas those from Serbia and Montenegro were grouped as Serbia [6]. In the SCI-EXPANDED database, the corresponding author is labelled as reprint author, but in this study, we used the term corresponding author [6].…”