Vascular Surgery Research in the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic: A Sex-Based Bibliometric Analysis

INTRODUCTION: The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted vascular surgery services globally and its impact on researchers has illustrated disproportionate barriers for female researchers. We assessed the pandemic’s consequences on bibliometric trends in vascular surgery and vascular medicine throughout the pandemic. METHODS: A scoping review was performed using the PubMed/MEDLINE, Scopus, and EMBASE databases from January to December 2020 to identify articles related to COVID-19 and vascular surgery or vascular medicine. Articles only describing cardiac or neurovascular care were excluded. The scoping review was performed according to the PRISMA-ScR guidelines. Bibliometric data were extracted and analyzed. RESULTS: Four hundred and fourteen articles were identified, including 125 (30.2%) original articles, 42 (10.1%) review papers, 105 (25.4%) case reports, 27 (6.5%) editorials and commentaries, 94 (22.7%) letters and correspondences, and 21 (5.1%) conference abstracts. The 5 most common countries of study or discussion were all high-income countries. English was the predominant (n = 393, 94.9%) language. Funding was reported for 5.1% (n = 21) of articles. In the first 6 months, 17.6% (n = 30) of first authors and 10.6% (n = 18) of last authors were female, while the last 6 months saw an increase in representation to 30.6% (n = 74) and 15.6% (n = 38) for first and last author, respectively. CONCLUSION: The pandemic caused a rapid surge in vascular publications related to COVID-19. Female authors remain underrepresented in vascular research and the share in female authorship has dropped early in the pandemic, but rose after the end of the first wave. High-income countries remain overrepresented in research productivity, alluding to important disparities in COVID-19-related literature.