[Development of Italian research in anesthesiology and intensive care]

The development of the Italian research in Anaesthesia and Intensive Care medicine has been evaluated by comparing the total number of papers in this field and the number of the Italian papers in this field published in the years 1977, 1987, 1997. The results showed: a) an increase of the total number of papers published in the indexed journals dedicated to Anesthesia and Intensive Care with an increase higher than 50% per decade. In the same period the number of Italian papers increased from virtual representation (1 paper/year) to 19 papers per year in 1997. b) The papers dedicated to intensive care medicine showed a similar increase. In spite of this, the indexed scientific production of the Italian scientific community remains underexpressed.