bibliometric study of epidural anesthesia: a 24-year review

After introduction of epidural anesthesia [EA] in the early 20[th] century, it has become an essential technique in anesthesiology and many physicians consider it the gold standard analgesic technique for major surgeries. As EA has improved anesthesia methods dramatically and aimed to perform a scientometric analysis on this topic. Cross-sectional study Mashad University of Medical Sciences, Iran Articles were retrieved from the Web of Science [ISI] from 1990 to 2013. Intervention[s]: The total number of published items was 4612; subsequent analysis was performed on results considering published items per year, country, funding agency, institution, journal, publication language, and author and subject area. The results were analyzed considering published items per year, country, funding agency and institution, journal, publication language and author. Additionally, subject areas under which the articles were published were evaluated. The primary search yielded 4612 publications; out of these 3200 [69.38%] were original articles. More than half of articles [2466] were published under "anesthesiology" subject. The USA was the leading country in producing articles under this topic and engaged highest collaboration rate with 64 collaborations. It seems that there is an overall increase in total number of articles, citations and highly cited articles about EA during these two decades