Publication trends on the posterior cruciate ligament over the past 10 years in PubMed: Review article

BACKGROUND: The posterior cruciate ligament (PCL) is one of the rare operated ligament of the knee. Details on the top journals, universities, and authors on the topic would be helpful to identify the sources of information for clinical and research queries as well as to observe trends for future research and identify universities/authors of particular interest for training or to follow their research. PURPOSE: To consolidate information from PubMed on the PCL from 2009 to 2019, spanning 10 years. STUDY DESIGN: Cross-sectional study. METHODS: A search of the PubMed database was conducted for the PCL, and 593 articles published over the past 10 years were analysed for further details. These details included the number of publications per year, top 10 journals publishing on the PCL, top 10 first authors publishing articles on the PCL. RESULTS: The top journal and top author in all position publishing on the PCL were Knee surgery, sports traumatology, arthroscopy and Robert F. LaPrade, respectively. The most articles published by a first author were by Yong Seuk Lee. The United States was the most published country, and 4 of the top 10 affiliations were from this country. CONCLUSION: Mining the data on the PCL in PubMed produced useful information about good sources of publications on this topic, including authors/journals that could be followed. The strength of their association with other authors could potentially indicate co-workers, common research interests, and collaborative studies.