Abstract
Abstract Aim Nail bed injuries are the commonest paediatric hand injuries. Optimal management is essential to restoring form and function of the nail and fingertip, however high-level evidence of nail bed injury management is lacking, leading to large discrepancies in clinical practice. This paper evaluates the 100 most cited papers in nail bed injury and analyses their study characteristics to assess current research focus and evidence levels. Method A Web of Science search was carried out using the search term “nail bed injury”. All article types were included, and no language or publication date restrictions were applied. Results were ranked by overall citation number. All abstracts were screened for study relevance and the top 100 eligible studies were analysed for study type, main study theme, journal, and year of publication. Result The three most common study types included retrospective studies (n = 33), literature reviews (n = 25), case reports/series (n = 20). The three main study themes included evaluation of repair techniques (n = 72), aetiology and epidemiology of nail bed injuries (n = 12), and anatomical assessments (n = 7). The most frequently represented journals include Journal of Hand Surgery (n = 30), Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery (n = 7) and Hand Clinics (n = 4). Conclusions The most influential papers in nail bed injury are those describing repair techniques. There remains a lack of high level evidence with most papers presenting level 3-5 evidence. This paper demonstrates a continued need for more higher level robust evidence in the field of nail bed injuries.
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