The 100 Most-disruptive Articles in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery and Sub-specialties (1954–2014)

BACKGROUND: Alternative bibliometrics have recently been the subject of significantly increased interest. The disruption index is a new bibliometric that was recently applied to surgery and urology and identifies papers that shift paradigms and eclipse previous research in a given field. METHODS: The 100 most-disruptive publications in the 14 most prominent plastic and reconstructive surgery and subspecialty journals were identified. RESULTS: We present the 100 most-disruptive studies as well as the 100 most-cited studies for comparison in n=14 of the most popular plastic and reconstructive surgery (and subspecialty) journals between 1954 and 2014. The 100 most-disruptive publications in these journals were more disruptive than 99.8% of all PubMed papers. Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery (PRS) had the most papers in the top 100 (n=64) followed by British Journal of Plastic Surgery (currently Journal of Plastic, Reconstructive & Aesthetic Surgery, n=15), and Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery (n=7). PRS had 9 of the top 10 papers. However, Clinics in Plastic Surgery had the highest average disruption score for all its published papers (0.0029). The correlation coefficient linking disruption scores and citation counts was 0.01 and 0.11, respectively. The most common decade represented in the top 100 was the 1980's (n=31) and the least common was the 2000's (n=9). CONCLUSIONS: This is the first application of the disruption index to plastic and reconstructive surgery. The disruption score provides a unique ability to identify research that has shifted paradigms and driven the innovation that defines our specialty.