Trends in quantitative methods used for atrial fibrillation and ventricular tachycardia analyses

Abstract

Background: Improved quantitative and computational research efforts would be useful for better and more accurate analysis of heart arrhythmias, and to target catheter ablation sites. To pinpoint useful and leading-edge quantitative methods, research trends of articles published in peer-reviewed journals were identified. Methods: The MEDLINE search tool and an in-house developed software program were used to detect quantitative trends in arrhythmia research. The main keywords used were ‘atrial fibrillation’ and ‘ventricular tachycardia’, which were searched in combination with commonly associated quantitative keywords for signal and imaging data. The search period used was 1960–2013. The linear regression trend over the search period was calculated, and the slope and regression coefficient was tabulated along with the onset year of the trend. Results: In 1960, ‘atrial fibrillation’ and ‘ventricular tachycardia’ appeared in the title or abstract of less than 20 peer-reviewed articles each. A sharp increase in ventricular tachycardia publications occurred from 1975 to 1992 to a peak of over 600 publications; since 1992 the number of ventricular tachycardia studies has leveled. However, the number of atrial fibrillation papers has increased sharply since 1978, surpassing ventricular tachycardia studies in 1993, to over 3500 studies in 2013. From 1960 to 2013, the fraction of ventricular tachycardia papers associated with any particular quantitative keyword, versus the total number of ventricular tachycardia publications, was often greater than the fraction of atrial fibrillation papers associated with the same quantitative keyword, versus the total number of atrial fibrillation publications. Studies published in the bioengineering and bioinformatics literature comprise approximately 10% of all quantitative biomedical studies published on atrial fibrillation and ventricular tachycardia. Conclusions: The MEDLINE search tool identified publication trends in quantitative arrhythmia research. Although ventricular tachycardia is a common ailment, as a quantitative research topic it appears only 20% as often as atrial fibrillation. Much of the quantitative ventricular tachycardia literature peaked in the 1990's, while there is a continued sharp increase in atrial fibrillation research studies. This may have resulted from the publishing of seminal studies spurring interest in quantitative analysis of atrial fibrillation, versus the publishing of curative methods for treatment ventricular tachycardia, particularly during the period of approximately 1995–2000. Keywords: Atrial fibrillation, MEDLINE, Publishing, Quantitative, Research trends, Ventricular tachycardia