Who takes care of intensive care? Changes over the last two decades

Intensive care units are very important across various fields of medicine, and there are many high-quality journals that publish about intensive care. However, there is a lack of information regarding which disciplines publish the most in these journals. We aim to evaluate the intensive care literature.

We searched the papers published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, Intensive Care Medicine, Critical Care Medicine and Critical Care to gain information regarding authors' specializations. We collected specialization data from PubMed, Google Scholar, and also from various journal websites. We examined the changes in the proportion of disciplines that are actively contributing to intensive care literature.

Regardless of the year and the journal, intensivists were the most common writers (1,047/4,807, 21.8%) overall. This was followed by pulmonology (843, 17.5%), anesthesia (827, 17.2%), others (602, 12.5%), and pediatrics (374, 7.8%). The United States of America (1,470/30.8%), France (573/11.2%), and Germany (332/6.9%) were at the top of the list in terms of productivity.

With the increase in the number of intensive care units and the development of an understanding of intensive care, we observed that intensivists are publishing more in intensive care literature.