title: Milestones Contributing to the Evolution of Craniofacial Surgery.
abstract: Craniofacial surgery (CFS) has a rich history of collaboration with a wide variety of surgical and nonsurgical specialties. This has resulted in a large volume of publications across this spectrum of subspecialties cataloging the advancements across the field. The authors aim to analyze the characteristics of the most cited articles in CFS. A literature search was performed using the Thomson/Reuters Web of Knowledge database to identify the top 50 most cited articles in CFS. The articles were analyzed for journal distribution, total citations, year of publication, citations per year, number of authors, type of article, institution, departmental affiliation, national affiliation, and top contributors. The articles were extracted from an assortment of 21 journals. The number of citations per article ranged from 115 to 1092 (average of 185). Forty-eight percent of articles were published in the 1990s, and 22% in the 2000s. The average number of years since publication until the present time was 21.34 (range 6-45 y). The most cited article (1092 citations and 52 citations/y) was an article by McCarthy et al on human mandible lengthening via gradual distraction. Departmental distribution indicated that the majority were attributable to departments of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery for 21 articles (42%). Twenty articles were categorized under cranial defect/bone substitutes, 12 under craniosynostosis, 7 under surgical modeling, 6 under distraction osteogenesis, and the remaining 5 under other. These articles qualitatively represent important milestones in CFS. This study affirms the potential value of "number of citations" as a meaningful metric when assessing the importance of an article within CFS.
authors.affiliation: Department of Plastic Surgery, Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, OH.
authors.forename: Kashyap Komarraju
authors.initials: KK
authors.lastname: Tadisina
authors.forename: Susan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Orra
authors.forename: Bahar Bassiri
authors.initials: BB
authors.lastname: Gharb
authors.forename: Antonio
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Rampazzo
authors.forename: Francis
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Papay
authors.forename: James E
authors.initials: JE
authors.lastname: Zins
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D002648:Child; D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D019465:Craniofacial Abnormalities / Q000601:surgery*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D033183:Interdisciplinary Communication; D055811:Journal Impact Factor; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010506:Periodicals as Topic; D019651:Plastic Surgery Procedures; D013043:Specialties, Surgical; D055815:Young Adult