Trends in shoulder arthroplasty research over the decades

The aim of this study is to analyse the most cited articles in shoulder arthroplasty surgery and identify trends in topics by decade.

Journal Citation Index Web of Science (WoS) was searched to find articles using the search terms "shoulder arthroplasty", "shoulder hemiarthroplasty", "shoulder replacement" and "shoulder prosthesis". All articles were ranked according to most cited overall and most cited between 2022 and 2023, and then further analysed to find the most cited articles per decade. Articles were studies for topic, study type, evidence level and number of subjects. A second search was performed using Google Scholar (GS) with the same search terms.

All the most cited articles were published in 4 orthopaedic journals. Citation counts were higher for GS searches than WoS for every article, by an average of 1.92 times. Each decade's most cited articles seemed to fit into a few broad topics, showing trends in that decade. The highest cited papers were generally low-level evidence studies.

Shoulder arthroplasty literature appears to follow trends throughout the decade. High quality evidence is lacking in the highest cited papers, but this study highlights the importance and value of these lower-evidence breakthrough studies, which have shaped shoulder arthroplasty surgery.