Top 100 Most Cited Papers in Laser-Assisted in situ Keratomileusis Surgery: A Bibliometric Analysis.

To conduct a bibliometric analysis of the 100 most cited publications on LASIK using the Scientific Information (ISI) Web of Knowledge database. This analysis used keyword-specific searches within the Web of Science database to isolate the 100 most frequently cited LASIK articles published between 1996 and 2019 (T100). Number of citations per article and per year were quantified from 1996 to 2019. Title, authors (as well as affiliated institutions and countries of origin), journal, year of publication, and citation frequency were variables analyzed. Of the T100 articles, each article was cited between 103 to 411 times with a mean of 167 citations. Between 0-11 articles in the T100 were published every year on average with a median of 5 publications per year. The highest concentration of T100 publications occurred between 2003 and 2008 at 51%. A decrease in the annual publication rate of influential articles was observed after 2010 at 23%; 39.1% of these articles compared LASIK to newer refractive surgical approaches. The highest number of T100 articles were from the Journal of Refractive Surgery. The University of California System produced the highest number of T100 articles. The author with the most articles in the T100 is Dan Z. Reinstein. Most T100 articles originated from the United States. The peak of influential LASIK research occurred between 2000-2010, likely due to topics such as postprocedural corneal ectasia and the femtosecond laser approach. While newer surgical techniques such as SMILE may have contributed to the decline in the annual rate of LASIK-related publication, the underlying cause for this decline is unclear.