Top 50 spine surgery publications most cited by patents: a bibliometric analysis focused on research driving innovation.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: The use of bibliometric analysis studies allows for the precise assessment of high impact contributions to various fields of study. A bibliometric assessment of academic works cited in filed patents enables tracking the academic studies which have been most influential in development of new technologies in spine surgery. METHODS: The Lens database was utilized to retrieve scholarly articles related to the field of spine surgery, with special focus on spinal fusion and biologics. Scholarly works cited in patents were organized by the publishing journal, article topic, study type, publishing institution, and author information. We categorized such publications in terms of their country of origin and, for patents within the US, region of origin. RESULTS: The search criteria yielded 37,005 scholarly works related to spine surgery published between 1889-2023 and a total of 947 scholarly works cited in patents from 1968-2023. Many of the top contributing authors were orthopedic surgeons while the top 3 authors were biomedical engineers. The region in the US with the most citations in patents and the most scholarly work overall was the middle-Atlantic region. CONCLUSIONS: We assessed trends in spine surgery innovation over time, evaluated regional contributions to spine surgery innovation in the United States and worldwide, and examined the top institutions driving innovation in spine surgery. Our results have historical importance and scientific value insofar as the identified trends and other insights provided by our data may influence future decisions in terms of research efforts and allocation of research funds.