A scientometric and comparative study of rhabdomyosarcoma research by pediatricians and stomatologists

Rhabdomyosarcoma (RMS) frequently affects pediatric patients and common occurs in the head and neck region. The purpose of this study was to compare the scientometric characteristics of RMS publications by pediatricians and stomatologists.

All the papers on RMS were comprehensively retrieved from the Scopus database, and divided into pediatricians and stomatologists groups.

There were 2211 and 234 papers on RMS were published by rheumatologists and stomatologists, respectively. The total citation count was 63,868 and the h index was 111 for RMS publications by pediatricians, while the respective values for stomatologists were 2952 and 29. The two major subtypes of RMS are embryonal and alveolar types, and genetic alterations further categorize RMS into PAX3/7-FOXO1 fusion-positive and fusion-negative types. Cancer chemotherapy mainly vincristine, dactinomycin, and cyclophosphamide, surgery, radiotherapy, and brachytherapy were the common keywords of treatment. The more common keywords such as age, facial neoplasms, mouth neoplasms, orbital neoplasms, gingiva, mandible, DNA-binding proteins, gene silencing, and Rh30 cell line were reported by stomatologists.

This study is the first comprehensive report of the scientometric characteristics of RMS publications by pediatricians and stomatologists, highlighting the need for increased awareness among clinicians to avoid diagnostic delays and ensure timely treatment.