A bibliometric analysis of the most-cited articles on craniospinal epidural hematoma

AIM Epidural hematoma (EDH) is a commonly encountered neurosurgical condition. Numerous articles have been published on EDH. Bibliometric analysis studies the chronological trends and ranks the most impactful articles in a given field. The aim of this paper is to analyze the most-cited articles on cranial and spinal EDH. MATERIAL AND METHODS A title-specific search was performed on the Scopus database using the term "epidural hematoma" in June 2020, with no publication date restrictions. The top 100 most-cited articles were collected, reviewed, and analyzed. RESULTS A total of 2165 articles were published on EDH from 1949 to 2020, and the top 100 most-cited ones were published between 1966 and 2014, receiving an average citation of 84.7 per paper. Most papers were published in Neurosurgery and Journal of Neurosurgery (JNS). 48% of the most-cited articles on EDH originated from the United States of America (USA). Notably, studies on spinal EDH represented 75% of the most-cited articles in our review. The most-cited article on EDH was published by Lawton et al. in 1995, receiving a total of 412 citations at an annual citation rate of 16.4%. CONCLUSION This report identifies the most influential publications on EDH as well as the publications trends over the last 70 years. Recognition of the most impactful work is an important tool for clinicians and researchers as it can reflect the enormous changes in the clinical practice. This report can serve as a guide for developing evidence-based practices and identifying areas of research inadequacy.