The 100 most-cited articles in spinal oncology

OBJECTIVE The authors' objective was to identify the 100 most-cited research articles in the field of spinal oncology. METHODS The Thomson Reuters Web of Science service was queried for the years 1864-2015 without language restrictions. Articles were sorted in descending order of the number of times they were cited by other studies, and all titles and abstracts were screened to identify the research areas of the top 100 articles. Levels of evidence were assigned on the basis of the North American Spine Society criteria. RESULTS The authors identified the 100 most-cited articles in spinal oncology, which collectively had been cited 20,771 times at the time of this writing. The oldest article on this top 100 list had been published in 1931, and the most recent in 2008; the most prolific decade was the 1990s, with 34 articles on this list having been published during that period. There were 4 studies with Level I evidence, 3 with Level II evidence, 9 with Level III evidence, 70 with Level IV evidence, and 2 with Level V evidence; levels of evidence were not assigned to 12 studies because they were not on therapeutic, prognostic, or diagnostic topics. Thirty-one unique journals contributed to the 100 articles, with the Journal of Neurosurgery contributing most of the articles (n = 25). The specialties covered included neurosurgery, orthopedic surgery, neurology, radiation oncology, and pathology. Sixty-seven articles reported clinical outcomes. The most common country of article origin was the United States (n = 62), followed by Canada (n = 8) and France (n = 7). The most common topics were spinal metastases (n = 35), intramedullary tumors (n = 18), chordoma (n = 17), intradural tumors (n = 7), vertebroplasty/kyphoplasty (n = 7), primary bone tumors (n = 6), and others (n = 10). One researcher had authored 6 studies on the top 100 list, and 7 authors had 3 studies each on this list. CONCLUSIONS This study identified the 100 most-cited research articles in the area of spinal oncology. The studies highlighted the multidisciplinary and multimodal nature of spinal tumor management. Recognition of historical articles may guide future spinal oncology research.