50 years in urinary incontinence: a bibliometric analysis of the top 100 cited articles of the last 50 years.

INTRODUCTION

A large body of literature has been published on urinary incontinence, ranging from medical treatment, epidemiology and surgical techniques. A bibliometric analysis is used to identify high-quality research papers using criteria such as citation rate and journal impact factor.

OBJECTIVES

To describe key themes and topics in urinary incontinence literature in the last 50 years.

METHODS

Thomson Reuters Web of Science citation indexing database was used to identify the top 100 cited articles in urinary incontinence in the last 50 years. Data sets were subdivided into manuscript type, theme, author, institution, country of origin, journal and citation rate.

RESULTS

Mean number of citations in the top 100 group for manuscripts was 676, ranging between 2444 and 306. Most cited paper was by Irwin et al. The manuscript with the highest citation rate was by Dumoulin et al., citation rate of 470.7/year. The largest number of manuscripts was published between 2000 and 2009 (n = 47). The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) had the highest impact factor (74.67) and five manuscripts were published in this journal. Fifty-seven per cent of articles were published in journals with impact factor < 5. The vast majority of the articles focussed on epidemiology, followed by surgical treatment of urinary incontinence, 69% being original research studies.

CONCLUSION

This is the first bibliometric analysis of the top 100 most influential papers in urinary incontinence. The key themes identified were epidemiology and surgical management, with most papers being original research studies.