Top Citations of Pediatric Emergency Medicine Publications in the Emergency Medicine Literature

Objectives The goal of this study was to identify and analyze the 100 most frequently cited journal articles pertaining to the field of pediatric emergency medicine (PEM) and published in emergency medicine (EM) peer-reviewed literature. Methods The 3 databases, Scopus Library, Google Scholar, and Web of Science, were subjected to a search by topic, keyword, and publication journal to identify the 100 most frequently cited articles addressing PEM issues in the EM literature. Our search included articles published beginning in 1983 and ending in 2016. Median citation frequency, study topics within the specialty of PEM, years of publication, and countries of origin were each compiled and analyzed. Mean citation frequencies were used to rank the articles, which accounted for differences in the results among the 3 databases. Once organized into a list of the 100 most often cited articles in PEM, those with an outcome of the same mean citation frequency were ranked in alphabetical order, according to the initial letter of last name of the first author of the publication. Results A ranking was created of the 100 most frequently cited articles in pediatric emergency medicine by the mean number of citations. Citation counts ranged from a high of 249 to a low of 71, with a median frequency of 101. The United States had 92 articles on the list, whereas the remainder was comprised of the following countries: Australia (3), Canada (3), Germany (1), and Spain (1). The most common topic areas (and their numbers) noted were related to resuscitation (23) and anesthesia (22). The most frequently cited 100 articles were all published between the years 1983 and 2010. Top publication years (and number of articles) included 2000 (11), 2002 (8), and 2003 (8). The years ranging from 1993 to 2005 covered 69% of published articles. Journals of publications (and article counts) were Annals of Emergency Medicine (69), Pediatric Emergency Care (15), Academic Emergency Medicine (12), and Resuscitation (4). Conclusions This analysis provides a review of citation frequency of top-cited PEM articles published in EM journals. This determines the influence of these PEM publications on the EM specialty. The importance of education on resuscitation and anesthesia topics in PEM was evident. Most of the articles were published more than 10 to 15 years ago, indicating that they could be considered landmarks in the subspecialty of PEM. This signifies their importance to other authors in this field, who chose to cite them as having created a significant impact on their own publications.