Epidural Steroid Injection: A Bibliometric Analysis of the 100 Most Cited Articles

ABS TRACT Objective: Epidural steroid injection (ESI) is frequently used for treating radicular pain.It is especially preferred for pain that persists despite conservative treatment.This study aims to examine the top 100 most cited articles on ESI.Material and Methods: The Scopus database was used to search for the 100 most cited articles.The article name, first author, affiliation, name of the journal and year of publication information were examined for the study.In addition, the countries where the cited journals were published, their impact factors, the distribution of the most cited studies by year, and the total number of citations were investigated.Results: The 100 most cited studies were selected from 2,784 studies conducted between 1980 and 2024.Most studies were published between 2000 and 2010 and were conducted in the USA (68%).Most publications were found to be published by pain medicine clinics (33%) and were most frequently published in the journal Pain Physician (21%).Publications related to the lumbar region constituted 75% of all publications, and 22 (22%) were associated with ESI complications.Conclusion: The present study provides a comprehensive list of the most important articles on ESI from a historical perspective.These data will be helpful to our colleagues who want to study ESI.