Pediatric button battery ingestion: Publication trends in the literature

Examine literature for evidence of changes in button battery (BB) research over time including: amount and rate of literature output, levels of evidence, and the location of the research.

Literature review of all peer-reviewed button battery literature available online through Pubmed and Embase was performed. Inclusion criteria were applied to ensure relevance. Publications were grouped into 4 time periods. Various study characteristics were compared between groups.

A total of 255 original research studies were reviewed. A significant increase in study number was found with a 664% increase comparing 2009-2018 and 1977-1988 (p < 0.001) and a 187% increase comparing 2009-2018 and all previous years. Average author number significantly increased over the study period (range: 2.8 to 4.4; p < 0.001). Case report or case series were consistently the most common type of study design (range: 56.5% to 84.0%). Level of evidence has remained at 4-5 for the majority of studies (range: 87% to 92.1%). First author specialty remained stable over time, with non-otolaryngologist surgeons being the most common authors, followed by pediatricians and otolaryngologists (28.8%, 18.9%, 18.5%, respectively). Location of research has diversified, with US publications falling from 50% to 29.5% of all studies when comparing 1977-1988 to 2009-2018 time periods.

Button battery ingestion in the pediatric population has been an important topic of discussion among various medical specialties due to a rise in morbidity and mortality surrounding these ingestions. Despite the increase in number of studies and authors, the strength of these studies has remained largely unchanged.