Cardiac MR imaging: balanced publication by radiologists and cardiologists

To retrospectively evaluate the number of articles on cardiac magnetic resonance (MR) imaging written by authors from radiology and cardiology departments and published in Medline-indexed journals from 1999 to 2004 and the relationship between the author's specialty and various parameters.

Specific search profiles were devised to retrieve items from the Medline database. Eight hundred seven articles were included in the study. Relationships between the author's specialty (radiology or cardiology) and several evaluated parameters were analyzed and compared by using chi(2) statistics.

Four hundred eight (50.5%) of 807 publications were from cardiologists, and 399 (49.5%) of 807 were from radiologists. Articles most commonly originated from the United States (n = 270, 53% from radiologists) and Germany (n = 178, 66% from radiologists). Developing techniques (n = 248, 64% from radiologists, P < .001) was the most frequent topic. Results of clinical trials, controlled clinical trials, and randomized controlled trials were published mainly by cardiologists (67%, P = .03; 70%, P = .2; 86%, P = .008, respectively). A majority of articles were published in cardiology journals (n = 269, 83% from cardiologists, P < .001) and radiology journals (n = 249, 82% from radiologists, P < .001).

The number of publications on cardiac MR imaging written by radiologists and that written by cardiologists was essentially the same.