Résumé
BACKGROUND:Bioartificial liver could partial y replace the major liver functions, including detoxification, synthesis, secretion and biotransformation. OBJECTIVE:To use bibliometric indexes to track study focuses on bioartificial liver, and to investigate the relationships among geographic origin, impact factors, and highly cited articles indexed in Web of Science. METHODS:A list of citation classics for bioartificial liver was generated by searching the database of Web of Science-Expanded using the terms“artificial liver support system”or artificial liver or“bioartificial liver”. The top 33 cited research articles which were cited more than 100 times were retrieved. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS:Of 4 144 articles published, the 33 top-cited articles were published between 1992 and 2010. The highest citations paper was published in 2002, with a total of 668 citations, mean cited 55.67 per year. The total citations of 33 articles were 6 094 times, with a mean of 12.64 citations per article. These top-cited papers came from 11 countries, of which 12 articles came from the United States. University of Rostock led the list of classics with five papers. Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital ranked the second with four papers each. The 33 top-cited articles were published in 18 journals, predominantly Annals of Surgery and Hepatology, fol owed by Artificial Organs and Biotechnology and Bioengineering. Our bibliometric analysis provides a historical perspective on the progress of bioartificial liver research. Articles originating from outstanding institutions of the United States and published in high-impact journals are most likely to be cited.