[German language publications of German university departments of anesthesiology]

To evaluate contributions of German university departments of anesthesiology to the German language literature.

Using Medline (Silverplatter, volumes 1988-1997 of the 1999 edition) we searched for (journal-article IN SO) AND ((anesth* OR anasth* OR anaesth*) in AD) AND (LA-German). The publications found were manually evaluated for address. The "Jahrbuch der Anästhesiologie und Intensivmedizin" (1992-1995) was evaluated for the number of staff members (anaesthesiologists, residents and non-physician scientists).

The total number of publications was about 200/year. Individual departments contributed very differently (range: 0.6 publications/year to 14.8 publications/year). The department with the highest per capita output had about 0.4 Medline-indexed papers per scientist and year, the department with the lowest per capita output had about 0.02 papers per scientist and year.

There is a great difference with respect to total publication count. The differences in total publication count can only in part be explained by different size of the departments. Even the leading department had far less than 1 paper per scientist and year.