Interdisciplinary Neurosurgery (Dec 2020)
The 100 most cited papers centered on tethered cord syndrome
Abstract
Background: There is a vast amount of published articles, centered on tethered cord syndrome, which is related to a constellation of diverse pathological entities, included under the term occult spinal dysraphism. Objective: To present the 100 most-cited articles dedicated to the entity of tethered cord syndrome and to present a comprehensive review of the relevant literature. Methods: In April 2020, we executed a title- focused search using Thomson Reuters Web of Science database in order to identify the most cited articles relevant to tethered cord syndrome. Consequently, we reviewed the results to certify that they were relevant to the criteria of our research protocol. The 100 most cited papers were chosen and further analyzed. Results: Our search resulted in 769 articles, published from 1976 until now. All of them combined, have been cited 5.340 times, in a total of 2.097 different articles, with an average citation per item of 53.4.The most cited article was published by Yamada S., in 1981, while the last in our list was published by Walton, M et al in 1995. Conclusions: We distinguished the top 100 most-cited articles dedicated to tethered cord syndrome, all of which are demonstrating important aspects and conclusions, being well-supported and methodologically fully adequate. We also reviewed the relevant evolution of the concept of management and the knowledge of the natural history, as well as new data in tethered cord syndrome research, alongside with the relevant contributions of different authors, fields of special interest, and countries.
