The Top 100 Cited Articles in Clinical Orthopedic Sports Medicine
Orthopedic sports medicine continues to evolve, owing much of its clinical management and practice to rigorous academic research. In this review, we identify and describe the top 100 cited articles in clinical sports medicine and recognize the authors and institutions driving the research.
We collected articles (excluding basic science, animal, and cadaveric studies) from the 25 highest-impact sports medicine journals and analyzed them by number of citations, journal, publication date, institution, country, topic, and author.
Mean number of citations was 408 (range, 229-1629). The articles were published in 7 journals, most in the 1980s to 2000s, and represented 15 countries. Thirty topics were addressed, with a heavy emphasis on anterior cruciate ligament injury and reconstruction, knee rating systems, rotator cuff reconstruction, and chondrocyte transplantation. The 3 most cited articles, by Insall and colleagues, Constant and Murley, and Tegner and Lysholm, addressed a knee, a shoulder, and another knee rating system, respectively. Several authors contributed multiple articles. The Hospital for Special Surgery and the University of Bern contributed the most articles (5 each).
This study provides a comprehensive list of the past century’s major academic contributions to sports medicine. Residents and fellows may use this list to guide their scholarly investigations.
A criticism of bibliometric analysis is its use of number of citations as an accurate measure of academic contribution. However, other methods for measuring the productivity and impact of researchers (eg, the recently developed Hirsch Index) have their own drawbacks,115,116 including being able to compare authors only at the same point in their careers and self-citation. It is important to note that our analyses focused strictly on publications related to clinical sports medicine, with the exclusion of basic science and cadaveric biomechanical studies.
Through bibliometric citation analysis, we have identified the authors who have made lasting contributions to the field of sports medicine, and we have highlighted the publications that have been cited by hundreds to thousands of authors. This list identifies trends within the articles that have become “classic,” by nature of their deep permeation into subsequent sports medicine literature, and offers guidance for trainees interested in studying the most high-yield sports medicine literature. Given that 69 institutions in 15 countries conducted these studies, we have also shown that orthopedic research can be readily disseminated internationally. Last, our study provides a thorough overview of the sports medicine literature over the past century and provides a strong framework for future research in our field.
