The Evolution of Breast Reduction Publications: A Bibliometric Analysis

Objective This study aims to make a bibliometric analysis of the studies on breast reduction (BR) between the years 1980 and 2016 and identify important studies through trend topics as well as active authors, countries, universities, scientific journals, and citation and co-citation analyses about BR. Background Although BR looks like one of the cosmetic surgeries performed in order to restore the woman's appearance, in fact it is a reconstructive surgery that eliminates back pain, stance disorder, headache, shoulder pain, back and cervical disk hernia, difficulty in breathing, hollowness caused by bra straps, hygiene problems under breasts (e.g., rash or fungal infections), and limitations in some daily activities. However, the related literature has little information about the publications on this issue. Methods Bibliometric analysis was performed by downloading all the documents published between 1980 and 2016 from Thomson Reuters Web of Science (WoS; Thomson Reuters, New York, NY, USA), using the keywords including breast reduction, gigantomastia, reduction mammaplasty, and reduction mammoplasty. Results There was a total of 1427 publications in the WoS database. Of these publications, 869 (60.90%) were research articles. The top three research areas of these publications were surgery with 1178 (82.55%) publications, oncology with 78 (5.47%) publications, and obstetrics gynecology with 67 (4.70%) publications. The top three countries that contributed to the literature most were the USA (515), England (147), and Turkey (83), respectively; the top university that contributed most was Harvard University, and the top two authors who contributed most were Drew PJ and Iwuagwu OC (13; 0.91%). The top-cited publication was A Simplified Vertical Reduction Mammaplasty: Shortening the Learning Curve written by Hall-Findlay, EJ in 1999. The journals with top numbers of publications were Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery (483; 33.85%), Annals of Plastic Surgery (164; 11.50%) and Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (147; 10.30%) respectively. Conclusion Despite the fact that the BR literature is contributed by developed countries, developing countries, particularly Turkey and Brazil, also had significant contributions to the literature.