BACKGROUND: Articles cited counts are catalogued and help identify landmark papers. This study provides a citation classics of anesthesiology literature using the framework of subspecialties to provide a review of well-developed areas of research in anesthesiology. METHODS: A comprehensive list of the most-cited articles in anesthesia was compiled using a bibliometric database and general search terms such as "anesthesia" as well as subspecialty-specific search terms. Queries were reviewed for relevance to anesthesiology practice, categorized by subspecialty, and ranked according to their citation counts. RESULTS: The database resulted in 2519 articles published between 1945 and 2008. The specialty areas most represented were chronic pain medicine (11%), pharmacology (9%), and pain sciences (9%). CONCLUSIONS: This citations classic allows for advances in anesthesiology and its subspecialties to be highlighted as well to provide useful manuscripts to guide patient care, direct future research, and serve as sources for future academic pursuit.