The top 100 most cited articles on bronchoscopy: a bibliometric analysis

BACKGROUND: Bronchoscopy is applied broadly in the diagnosis and treatment of pulmonary diseases. Over the past few decades, an increasing number of studies about bronchoscopy have been published. However, little is known about their qualities and characteristics. METHODS: All of the databases in Web of Science (including the Web of Science Core Collection, BIOSIS Citation Index, KCI-Korean Journal Database, MEDLINE, Russian Science Citation Index, and SciELO Citation Index) were utilized to identify articles published from 1990 to 2020. The top 100 most cited articles about bronchoscopy were selected for degree centrality analysis and analyses regarding publication time, total citation number, the citation density, time-related flux, first author, published journal, geographic origin, and research theme. RESULTS: The selected articles were published mainly in the 2000s and 1990s. Citations per article ranged from 731 to 196. The leading country was the USA, followed by the United Kingdom. The most frequently studied themes were bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) fluid and biopsy. The degree centrality analysis connoted that “BAL, inflammation, diagnosis” had a high degree of centrality in the 1990s, while “diagnosis, BAL, biopsy, prospective” took centre stage in the 2000s. CONCLUSIONS: The time, area, and theme distribution of the 100 most cited articles on bronchoscopy have been thoroughly analyzed. It is noticeable that researches based on BAL and endobronchial or transbronchial biopsies currently plays a major role.