The 100 most cited articles on thoracic surgery management of lung cancer.

Abstract

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide. In 2019, 228,150 new lung cancer cases and 142,670 cancer deaths are projected to occur in the United States (1), and non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) accounts for nearly 85% of all diagnosed cases (1,2). As the US Preventative Services Task Force has released recommendations of computed tomography lung cancer screening for long-term smokers, the incidence of newly diagnosed lung cancer will have a marked increase (3). Over the past two decades, the therapies for lung cancer have evolved into a mature subspecialty, also being the culmination of a progressive research initiative and the continued innovation of interventional techniques. For operable NSCLC, the current guideline states that VATS lobectomy is the standard operation (4,5). In recent years, a great progress in the clinical treatment and basic research of adjuvant therapy for lung cancer has been obtained, such as chemotherapy, radiotherapy, target therapy, and immunotherapy (6-8). A large amount of literature is available to thoracic medicine specialists who perform thoracic surgery management of lung cancer. It is difficult to recognize articles of significance since the quality of the literature varies substantially and includes low impact studies and open access journals. An understanding of the available literature and the most heavily cited works will allow for a better understanding of the evidence base when discussing and providing these treatments. A bibliometric analysis is a quantitative method used to examine the knowledge structure and development of a research field and its publications. Among all the bibliometric methods, the citation analysis is the most common which focuses on citation number and number of citations per year (9,10). It evaluates the impact an article has had on a specific field of medicine by measuring the number of citations an article has received. Since 1971, the global output of academic research into the management of lung cancer has increased. There has been no specific quantitative analysis on the articles which have had the most significant impact on the treatment of lung cancer been performed. The aim of this study was to perform a citation analysis on the most cited articles in the thoracic surgery management for lung cancer and analyze each article individually, collecting the article type, year of publication, topic of interest, citation index, authorship, country of origin, institution, and level of evidence.