Normothermic machine perfusion in liver transplantation: a bibliometric analysis of the top 100 most cited articles

Normothermic machine perfusion (NMP) has increased substantially in the recent decade, being a vital tool in further organ preservation and reducing ischemia-reperfusion injury. The purpose of this study was to objectively conduct a bibliometric analysis of the top 100 cited articles to understand the evolution of NMP in liver transplantation.

Scopus was selected as our primary database. We explored the database to extract relevant articles, which were then ranked numerically by the number of citations. A list of the top 100 articles was created in descending order, and each article was further analyzed to identify trends and characteristics. A list of the top 10 review articles was also prepared.

The top 100 studies were cited a total of 6136 times from 2013 and 2023, with the most cited articles published in 2018. The total number of citations per article ranged from 7 to 787, with a median of 397 citations. The articles originated from 13 different countries, with the United Kingdom having the most articles (n = 26), followed by the Netherlands (n = 17) and the United States (n = 17). Liver Transplantation (n = 21), Transplantation (n = 10), American Journal of Transplantation (n = 10), and Annals of Surgery (n = 6) contributed to nearly half of the articles.

Research on NMP is rapidly growing and encompasses a variety of countries and institutions. Our analysis provides insight into the evolution of normothermic machine perfusion in liver transplantation, with the hope that this article may serve as a reference to aid healthcare professionals in efficiently assessing consensus, trends, and needs within the field.