The 50 most influential original articles in vascular surgery during the last 25 years

We have compiled a list of the 50 most-cited original articles in the field of vascular surgery during the last 25 years to highlight the important changes in practice that have occurred during this interval and provide surgical trainees in vascular surgery ready access to such influential articles.

A Web of Knowledge Citation Index Search was performed in December 2013 for the most-cited journal articles in the discipline of vascular surgery. We searched the term "vascular" in the cited reference search area and then further narrowed our results to exclude all categories except "surgery," "general internal medicine," and "cardiac/cardiovascular systems." We included only documents labeled as "articles" and those published in English. Articles dealing with cardiac surgery, interventional cardiology, and cardiovascular biology were excluded. Our search period was from January 1, 1988, through December 3, 2013. The 50 most frequently cited works were chosen, and a citation density was calculated for each, reflecting the average number of citations each received per year since publication. The articles were then sorted into a defined category, based on the clinical subject to which they pertained.

The Citation Index Search resulted 80,379 articles, of which the top 50 were indexed and organized according to their citation density and area within the scope of clinical vascular surgery. The number of citations ranged from 218 to 3593. The median citation density was 50.2 (range, 11.3-201.3).

This report is a representation of the most-cited original publications in the field of clinical vascular surgery during the last 25 years. This is an effort to highlight the seminal works that have shaped the discipline of vascular surgery as well as to provide a concise reference list for the surgical trainee in the process of his or her education.