Anterior cruciate ligament studies in south-east asia over the past 10 years: A systematic review

PURPOSE: There was numerous articles that discussed about anterior cruciate ligament (ACL). There was no study that wrapped up all about ACL in South-east asia country. This study aims to apply bibliometric tools to orthopaedics publications on ACL in South-east asia country. METHODS: We searched English full text with keyword “ACL” OR “Anterior Cruciate Ligament” AND “injury” OR “tear” OR “rupture” that published from January 1st(,) 2010 to December 31st(,) 2019 on PubMed, EMBASE, and Cochrane Library. We included article with at least has one author affiliation in the South-east asia country. RESULTS: A total of 12,570 articles were analyzed, and 64 articles were included. Study type analysis revealed that clinical research (n = 28; 43.7%) was the most frequent study type. The journal of knee surgery, sports traumatology, arthroscopy (KSSTA) and Orthopaedic Journal of Sports Medicine had the highest number of publications in general (n = 6; 9.4%). Sholahuddin Rhatomy (n = 4) was the top author with highest number in the first author order and Lingaraj Krishna (n = 12) was the top author with highest number of published article. Most of studies (n = 32; 50.0%) were published in high index journal with impact factor >1.0. CONCLUSION: ACL articles in South-east asia had high quality publication that proved by high impact journal publisher. There has been a steady increase in the article number since 2010 in South-east asia. This article quantifies the increased interest and could act as a baseline for future studies to compare.