Anesthesiology Articles Published in 2020: A Review and Characterization of COVID-19 Versus Non-COVID-19 Publications in Top Anesthesiology Journals

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has had a significant impact on the practice of medicine worldwide, particularly in anesthesiology. As the clinical realm has rapidly adjusted to the realities of the pandemic, anesthesiology literature has also changed significantly to reflect this. The purpose of this study was to characterize the effects the COVID-19 pandemic has had on anesthesiology literature. Specifically, it was hypothesized that the COVID-19-related literature in the anesthesiology community would gain more interest than non-COVID-19-related articles. A total of 15 anesthesiology-related journals with the highest impact factor in 2019, according to the Journal Citation Reports (JCR), were selected for data collection. An advanced PubMed search identified 5,722 COVID-19-related articles published by these journals in 2020. Next, articles with titles including “corona,” “COVID,” “COVID-19,” “pandemic,” “SARS,” or “SARS-CoV-2” were selected for inclusion in the study, which resulted in 676 (12%) articles. A Kruskal-Wallis test was used to assess the Altmetric score, which is a weighted calculation of the attention an article receives online, for COVID-19 versus non-COVID-19 articles. Articles were then further characterized across multiple different variables, including country of origin, month published, type of article, and subspecialty of anesthesiology it pertained to. Of the 15 journals investigated, 676 (12%) articles of the 5,722 total articles published were found to be COVID-19-related material. The majority of the articles were found to be published in April (18%), May (19.5%), and June (14%). The majority of these articles were related either to general anesthesia (operating room anesthesiology that is not tied to a particular subspecialty fellowship track) (48%) or critical care (39%). By article type, most were determined to be editorial (71%) in nature, followed by original research articles (21%), of which most were cross-sectional (55%) studies. When compared with non-COVID-19-related articles, COVID-19-related articles had a significantly greater Altmetric score (29.518 versus 8.6333, p < 0.001). Of the COVID-19-related articles, original articles had the greatest Altmetric score, when compared to editorials and guidelines (54.794 versus 20.777 versus 40.643, p < 0.002). The response of the academic anesthesiology community to the COVID-19 pandemic was strong and timely, with a particularly strong focus on critical care anesthesia. The impact of the pandemic was strongly felt by the anesthesiology community, and their timely response served to guide our country and world through an incredibly challenging time. The pandemic highlighted the value of anesthesiologists worldwide, not only in the operating room setting but particularly as critical care physicians.