Abedi AR. et al., 2021: The Trends of Urolithiasis Therapeutic Interventions over the Last 20 Years: A Bibliographic Study.
Abedi AR, Razzaghi M, Montazeri S, Allameh F.
Laser Application in Medical Sciences Research Center, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
Center of Excellence for Training Laser Application in Medicine, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
Men's Health and Reproductive Health Research Center, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
Abstract
Introduction: The clinical and economic burden of kidney stones is a challenge for the healthcare system. There is a limited bibliometric project exploring the literature trends on ‘urolithiasis’ and its related management. Methods: A systematic review was conducted to discover the related abstracts regarding each specific issue, investigated year by year from May 2000 to May 2020 (20 years). To make an effective comparison, the statistics resulting from every single study were allocated to two 10-year periods: period 1 (2000 to 2010) and period 2 (2010 to 2020). In this study, we included all English language articles, all non-English articles with English abstracts, and studies in which interventions were used for stone removal, including laser technology. Also, we excluded the studies without a published abstract, an intervention or a laser, animal and in vitro studies, and case reports. Results: These articles are about ureteroscopy (URS) (n=10360, 33.45%), percutaneous nephrolithotomy (PCN) (n =10790, 34.84%) and extra-corporeal shockwave lithotripsy (ESWL) (n=9846, 31.76%). When evaluating the two time periods, there were 9912 studies available in period one, which increased by ×2.12 times (112.71% rise) to 21084 studies in period two (P = 0.001). The increase was 133%, 103.51%, and 70.4% for URS, PCN, and SWL respectively. A total of 855 studies on Laser application via URS were published on PubMed over a 20-year period. There was an increasing trend toward using laser application via URS over the study period. Also, there were 230 articles published in period one, which increased by nearly 2.71 times (rise of 171.73%) to 625 papers in period two o (P = 0.002). Conclusion: The minimal invasive interventions for stone removal, including URS and PCN, increased dramatically in the last decade, and the use of lasers in stone treatment increased significantly in the last decade.
J Lasers Med Sci. 2021 Apr 21;12:e14. doi: 10.34172/jlms.2021.14. eCollection 2021. PMID: 34733737. Review. FREE ARTICLE
Comments 1
The authors have carried out a bibliographic analysis of articles on PCNL, URS and SWL published during two periods: 2000-2010 and 2010-2020. The aim was to demonstrate trends in the treatment of patients with urolithiasis.
One surprising finding for me was that approximately one third of the publications were devoted to each one of the three treatment modalities PCNL, URS and SWL. Another point of interest is that the number of publications increased dramatically from the first to the second period. The increment was most pronounced for PCNL and URS, but also the number of SWL publications increased. The marked increase in PCNL and URS articles to a large extent can be explained by technical and methodological improvements. This explanation, however, only partly is true for SWL. The marked increase of SWL articles is surprising in view of the decreased clinical popularity and application of this method relative to the two invasive modalities. The interpretation that the number of articles for all procedures increased because of the increased prevalence of urolithiasis only partly can explain the findings. Another important factor might be that there is a continuously increasing number of medical journals.
Hans-Göran Tiselius