Bioethics in the medical subspecialty literature

We have previously reported that a smaller percentage of the surgical literature than the medical literature is devoted to bioethics, and that this difference is statistically significant. In order to determine: 1) whether the medical subspecialty literature is more akin, in terms of its quantitative bioethics content, to the surgical or to the medical literature, and 2) whether differences exist between the "invasive" and the "noninvasive" medical subspecialties in terms of their quantitative bioethics content, we conducted a computerized search of the MEDLINE database. The journals searched were selected from the "Medicine", "Surgery", and "Cardiovascular System" sections of the "Brandon-Hill List", and the search was limited to the 1994 issues of these journals. From the 15 medical journals searched, 331 out of a total of 10,578 bibliographic records indexed dealt with bioethics, while from the 12 surgical journals searched only 14 out of a total of 3990 bibliographic records indexed dealt with bioethics. From the 26 medical subspecialty journals searched (14 "invasive" and 12 "noninvasive"), 38 (20 "invasive", 18 "noninvasive") out of a total of 12,733 bibliographic records indexed (5745 in the "invasive" literature, 6988 in the "non-invasive" literature) dealt with bioethics. We conclude that there is a statistically significant difference (p < 0.001) between the general medical literature and the medical subspecialty literature in terms of their quantitative bioethics content, that there is no such difference between the surgical literature and the medical subspecialty literature, and that no statistically significant difference exists between the "invasive" and the "noninvasive" medical subspecialties in terms of their quantitative bioethics content.