Abstract:

Objective: Although adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS) is the most commonly observed spinal deformity, there is limited bibliographic analysis of AIS in the literature. The aims of this study were to identify and analyze the top 50 most cited articles on AIS. Materials and Methods: On February 6th, 2020, we searched the Thomson Reuters Web of Science-Science Citation Index Expanded database using the term, “AIS”. We listed the articles by their number of citations. The titles of the articles, citation number, citation density, article content, journal of publication, author name, publishing country, institute, publishing specialty, and year of publication were noted. Results: The mean citation number was 210.4±148 (range: 117-873); the mean citation density was 12.8±14 (range: 3-46). The contents of 25 articles (50%) were related to surgical treatment outcomes. Most of the articles (74%) were published in “Spine”, and the total citation number was 6978. Most of the articles (67%, 33 articles) were published from the United States (USA). The first specialty of the primary authors of 46 articles was orthopedic surgery; LG Lenke and YJ Kim had the most citations for AIS-related articles. There was only one level 1 study. Conclusion: Our bibliographic analysis showed that most studies were based on surgical treatment for AIS in the USA, and that “Spine” had published more than 50% of these studies. Although the number of publications has increased rapidly over the years, prospective randomized trials for AIS treatment are still lacking.

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