Intraoperative neurophysiological monitoring in Latin America: A bibliometric analysis

A Bibliometric Review of Constituents, Themes, and Trends in Online Medical Consultation Research

As an emerging form of health care with accelerated growth in recent years, online medical consultation (OMC) has received extensive attention worldwide. Although the number of studies on OMC has increased substantially, few provide a comprehensive and up-to-date review of OMC's research constituents, themes, and trends. This study, therefore, extracted 1,801 OMC-related articles published in English from the Web of Science (WoS) Core Collection database during the past 30 years and employed a bibliometric analysis of WoS and CiteSpace to examine major constituents' distribution, collaboration relationships, themes, and trends. The results indicate that the United States, England, and China contributed the most to the proliferation of OMC studies. The United States had the greatest academic influence and the most collaborative connections, while China demonstrated the sharpest increase and most active development in recent years. However, there is a lack of substantial and close collaboration between researchers worldwide. The main themes of OMC research were Internet hospitals, COVID-19, mixed methods, online health community, and information technology. Researchers have recently shifted their attention to social media, management, efficacy, word of mouth, mental health, and anxiety. This review paper provides researchers and practitioners with a holistic and clear understanding of the features and trends of OMC research. It also identifies potential areas for future OMC research and sheds light on OMC practices.

Bibliometric Analysis: Six Decades of Scientific Production from a Nationwide Institution: Instituto de Seguridad y Servicios Sociales de los Trabajadores del Estado (ISSSTE) from Mexico

BACKGROUND

This study employed bibliometric analysis to ascertain the research focus areas among a group of Mexican physicians affiliated with the Instituto de Seguridad y Servicios Sociales de los Trabajadores del Estado (ISSSTE). ISSSTE, a healthcare institution catering to a diverse range of diseases, offers a distinctive perspective on the investigated specialties within the realm of health. The primary objective was to identify knowledge gaps in medical care disciplines through a comprehensive examination of scholarly publications.

METHODS

We retrieved Scopus papers affiliated with "ISSSTE" and saved them as .CSV files. Subsequently, we employed VOSviewer, biblioshiny, and bibliometrix for bibliometric analysis. This enabled us to identify prominent institutions, prolific authors, highly cited researchers, and their respective affiliations.

RESULTS

Our analysis identified 2063 publications; the specialty internal medicine accounted for the greatest proportion with 831 publications. Original papers accounted for 82% of the total, with 52% of them being written in Spanish. The majority of scientific output, 92%, originated from Mexico City. The annual production has steadily increased since 2010, peaking in 2021 with over 200 publications. However, papers on prevalent conditions, such as metabolic syndrome, received limited citations, and the L0 index (percentage of uncited items) for all papers is close to 60%. Scopus mislabeled one affiliation, and some cases show a low paper-to-author ratio of 0.5 Discussion: Additional concerns, such as honorary authorship due to excessive authors per paper, and the underlying causes of low citation rates in Mexican publications, warrant further examination. Moreover, our research emphasizes the urgency of bolstering research and development funding, which was consistently below 0.5% of GDP for the past four decades, falling short of legal mandates and international benchmarks. We endorse the establishment of robust research collectives in Latin America to address these challenges, foster regional scientific output, and transition from knowledge consumers to knowledge producers, thereby reducing dependence on foreign technology.

Surgical treatment of thoracolumbar fracture in ankylosing spondylitis: A comparison of percutaneous and open techniques

BACKGROUND CONTEXT

Posterior percutaneous long-segment internal fixation and open fixation with long-segment screws have been used to treat thoracolumbar fractures in ankylosing spondylitis patients.

PURPOSE

To observe the clinical effect of posterior percutaneous long-segment internal fixation in 26 ankylosing spondylitis (AS) patients with thoracolumbar fractures.

STUDY DESIGN

Retrospective cohort study.

PATIENT SAMPLE

Forty-seven AS patients who were diagnosed with thoracolumbar fractures and treated from December 2014 to December 2018.

OUTCOME MEASURES

Visual analog scale score, Cobb angle, American Spinal Injury Association Grade, SF-Qualiveen score, pedicle screw misplacement rate, operative duration, blood loss, complications, bed rest duration and modified MacNab score.

METHODS

All patients were divided into the percutaneous group (PG) and the open group. Twenty-six patients were treated with percutaneous long-segment internal fixation, and the remaining 21 underwent open fixation with long-segment screws. The minimum follow-up period was 12 months.

RESULTS

The operations were successful in both groups. A patient in the PG showed class C wound healing, while the others showed class A healing, and some patients experienced perioperative complications. All patients were followed up for 12-48 months (mean, 33.81 months), and all patients showed clinical osseous fracture healing. Significant differences were found in operative duration, intraoperative blood loss and postoperative bed rest duration between the two groups (P < 0.05). No significant difference was found in improvement of the visual analog scale score, Cobb angle of spinal kyphosis or neurological function after the operation (P > 0.05).

CONCLUSIONS

As a minimally invasive procedure, posterior percutaneous long-segment internal fixation requires less time, results in less blood loss and causes less trauma. This procedure can also improve patients' pain, neurological function and kyphotic deformity and achieve effects similar to those of traditional methods. With this curative clinical effect, this procedure can be used as an ideal surgical treatment for thoracolumbar fractures in AS patients, especially for elderly patients with underlying diseases and high surgical risk.

Neurocysticercosis research in Mexico: A bibliometric analysis of the Instituto Nacional de Neurología y Neurocirugía Manuel Velasco Suárez

Neurocysticercosis (NCC) is the most common neglected parasitic disease of the central nervous system and leads to many economic and health issues in endemic and non-endemic countries. A bibliometric analysis would shed light on the evolution and development of research in this field, and this is the first study on NCC research. Our institution in Mexico City, the Instituto Nacional de Neurología y Neurocirugía Manuel Velasco Suárez (INNN), has set some milestones in the management of neurocysticercosis and has a decade-long experience and such an analysis in an endemic country like Mexico will be beneficial. We tracked the scientific output in Scopus, from its foundation to March 2021. The studied variables were article type, number of citations, area (clinical/experimental), chronological profile, and preferred journals. In the period from 1964 to 2021, from a total of 3,166 articles from the institution, 232 papers are related to neurocysticercosis with a total of 7,155 citations. The trending topics in the clinical area are pharmacology and pathology in the experimental papers. The number of articles has steadily increased, but NCC is currently a neglected topic that needs further research to better address the disease burden and allow its eradication.