Multifocal contact lenses: A bibliometric study

PURPOSE: To analyze the state of scientific publications in multifocal contact lenses field through a bibliometric study. METHODS: The database used to carry out the study was SCOPUS and contained the descriptors “multifocal contact lens”, “bifocal contact lenses”, “progressive contact lenses” and “presbyopia contact lenses”, limited to the fields of title, keywords and abstract. The indicators applied in this research were: doubling time and annual growth rate, Price’s transience index, Lotka’s law of scientific productivity, and Bradford’s zones. RESULTS: A total of 346 articles were published between 1960 and 2019. The growth in the number of publications matches the exponential adjustment slightly better (R = 0.53). The duplication time was 13.2 years. The productivity level is focused on articles with an average number of authors of just 2.06 per article. The Bradford core was formed by two journals, Optometry and Vision Science and Eye and Contact Lens. CONCLUSIONS: Research on multifocal contact lenses has exponential growth, without evidence of having reached a saturation point. The main countries in scientific production in this field are the United States and Australia.