Medical hypothesis discovery and innovation in ophthalmology

Abstract

Background: Diabetic retinopathy is the major cause of blindness among working-age population across the world. Despite the urgent need for research strategic planning in this field, no systematic research has been previously performed analyzing the published research on diabetic retinopathy. The study aimed to analyze the scientific productions on DR for drawing a general roadmap for future research strategic planning in this field. Methods: A bibliometric method was used to obtain a view of the scientific production about diabetic retinopathy by data extracted from the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI). Specific parameters were retrieved from the ISI. Articles about diabetic retinopathy published from 1993-2013 were analyzed to obtain a view of the topic’s structure, history, and document relationships. Also, the trends in the most influential publications and authors were analyzed. Results: Most highly cited articles addressed epidemiologic and translational research topics in this field.  During the past three years, there has been a trend towards biomarker discovery and also more molecular translational research. Areas such as gene therapy and microRNAs are also among the recent hot topics. Conclusions: Through analyzing the characteristics of papers and the trends in scientific production we performed the first scientometric report on diabetic retinopathy. Most influential articles have been addressing epidemiology and translational research subjects in this field, which reflects that globally, the earlier diagnosis and treatment of this devastating disease still has the highest global  priority.