A bibliometric analysis of the field of anesthesia during 2009–2018

OBJECTIVE: The limited number of bibliometric studies in the literature have generally focused on the top-cited studies in the field of anesthesia, however, there is a lack of studies that made a holistic bibliometric evaluation of these works. The purpose of this study is to make a contemporary summary of the articles published in the field of anesthesia within the last 10 years through detailed bibliometric methods. METHODS: The articles published between the years 2009 and 2018 were downloaded from the Web of Science (WoS) database and analyzed using bibliometric methods. The literature review was conducted using the keyword “Anesthesiology” in the “Research Area” category via the advanced search option available in WoS. The relation between the number of publications of the countries and the Gross Domestic Products and Human Development Index values were analyzed using Spearman's correlation coefficient. The number of articles between the years 2019 and 2021 was estimated through linear regression analysis. RESULTS: A review of the literature indicated 41,003 articles in the Web of Science database. Estimations included 4,910 (3,971–5,849) articles for the year 2019. There was a high-level, positive significant correlation between the number of publications and Gross Domestic Product (r = 0.776, p < 0.001). CONCLUSION: The findings show that countries with high income are effective in the field of anesthesia, which indicates a strong association between research productivity and economic development. Undeveloped and developing countries should be encouraged to conduct research in the field of anesthesia.