A bibliometric analysis of general surgery residents entering into vascular surgery

Research productivity is an important component of the fellowship application for vascular surgery and is a criterion identified by program directors as important in the general surgery fellowship match. Bibliometric methods have been developed to standardize and quantify scholarly productivity. This study evaluated the research of general surgery residents who successfully matriculated into an independent vascular surgery fellowship.

A list of the independent vascular surgery fellowships for the 2021-2022 academic year was first identified on the Society for Vascular Surgery website. Programs that displayed vascular fellows were selected for analysis. The names of all first- and second-year fellows were entered into Scopus, Google Scholar, and ResearchGate to obtain various bibliometric variables including number of total publications, number of vascular surgery publications, and number of citations upon matriculation into fellowship. Regression models were created to assess factors associated with publications.

Among independent vascular surgery fellowships, 83% were in academic training centers, 8% were in community training centers, and 9% were in university-affiliated training centers. Two-thirds of independent vascular surgery fellowship websites displayed fellow names; 17% of fellowships had one fellow, 49% had two fellows, 19% had three fellows, and 15% had four fellows (2.32 ± 0.93 fellows on average). The average number of publications upon matriculation for independent vascular fellows was 5, with an average of 3 publications within vascular surgery journals. On average, an incoming independent vascular fellow had 22 total citations. A larger number of fellows in the program (3 or 4) was observed to strongly correlate with publications (P < 0.01), number of vascular surgery publications (P < 0.01), and number of citations (P = 0.04). The geographic region of the fellowship did not correlate with research output. There was also no significant difference in research productivity among vascular surgery fellows coming from academic versus community versus affiliated general surgery residencies.

Most independent vascular surgery fellowships are academic training centers with, on average, two fellows. Vascular surgery publications account for more than 50% of general surgery residents' research output upon vascular surgery fellowship matriculation. Larger independent vascular fellowships may attract candidates with greater scholarly productivity.