A Bibliometric Analysis of the Top 100 Cited Papers in Trabeculectomy

Purpose: To identify the most frequently cited articles on trabeculectomy through a bibliometric analysis. Methods: The Web of Science was queried using the term “trabeculectomy” to identify the 100 most cited (T100) publications. Articles were listed by title, authors’ affiliated institutions, journal title, year of publication, country of origin, funding sources, and citation count. Results: The T100 articles were published between the years 1975 and 2022. The number of total citations received by each article ranged from 83 to 550. The number one most cited T100 article was titled “Treatment Outcomes in The Tube Versus Trabeculectomy (TVT) Study After Five Years Of Follow-Up”. The greatest number of articles T100 articles were published in 2007 (n = 7) and 2002 (n = 7), followed by 1993 (n = 6) and 2012 (n = 6). The authors with the largest number of unique contributions to the T100 list were Feuer WJ (n = 8), Gedde SJ (n = 8), and Brandt JD (n = 7). The T100 articles appeared in ten journals, with the most contributions by Ophthalmology (n = 41) followed by American Journal of Ophthalmology (n = 28) and Archives of Ophthalmology (n = 7). The most frequently appearing keywords in T100 article titles included open angle glaucoma (6), primary open angle glaucoma (5), bleb (4), and tube versus trabeculectomy study (4). The topics of T100 articles evolved across the decades shifting from trabeculectomy-focused descriptive studies in the 1970s and 1980s, to comparative studies exploring alternative surgical interventions to trabeculectomy in the 2010s and 2020s. Conclusion: The peak of influential trabeculectomy research occurred in the mid 2000s, coinciding with the landmark TVT trial. In the subsequent decades, the topics of research have shifted away to alternative surgical interventions, possibly driven by the advent of newer surgical advances shifting the practice patterns for the management of glaucoma.