The 100 most cited manuscripts in coronary artery bypass grafting.

INTRODUCTION: To gain a better understanding of the progression of coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) and its impact on clinical practice, bibliometric citation analysis can be performed. Bibliometric citation analysis is a method of determining the most influential papers on a topic based on several citations and impact factor. METHOD: A search of the Thomson Reuters Web of Science citation indexing database and research platform was completed using the terms "CABG," "Coronary artery bypass graft," "Coronary artery," "bypass," and/or "bypass grafting." The returned dataset was sorted by the number of citations. RESULTS: The search yielded a total of 11 560 papers which were ranked in order of citations. New England Journal of Medicine published the most papers in the top 100 and generated the most significant number of citations with 20 papers in total followed by Journal of the American College of Cardiology. It also has the highest impact factor and 5-year impact fact in 2007 of 79.26 and 67.513, respectively. CONCLUSION: The most cited manuscripts by Serruys et al described a randomised trial comparing percutaneous coronary intervention and CABG for treating severe coronary artery disease. This work provides the most influential references related to CABG and serves as a guide as to the area of focus in CABG.