BACKGROUND: In recent years, rapid prototyping (RP) techniques have been used widely in the field of hard tissue surgery. However, no related reports of bibilometric analysis have been published in China.
OBJECTIVE: To explore the current and tendency of the application of RP techniques in the field of orthopaedics in our country using bibiometric analysis for relative documents.
METHODS: CBMdisc (1978-01/2010-06) with subject headings “orthopaedics” and keywords “rapid prototyping” or other keywords describing RP techniques, and CHKD (1994-01/2010-06) with keywords “rapid prototyping” or other keywords describing RP techniques were used for computer-based online search. Hand retrieval was performed by searching documents from current journals such as Chinese Journal of Orthopaedics, Chinese Journal of Orthopaedic Trauma, Orthopaedic Journal of China and Journal of Clinical Rehabilitative Tissue Engineering Research. A total of 241 articles were collected, and 201 were finally included after reading the full-text and excluding repetitive articles and independent articles.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSTIONS: The first document regarding RP techniques application in orthopaedics field was published in 1998 in our country. Following increasing recognition and profound researches on RP techniques, more and more researchers paid attention to this topic. Journal of Clinical Rehabilitative Tissue Engineering Research, Chinese Journal of Orthopaedic Trauma and Orthopaedic Journal of China and Orthopedic Journal of China were important periodicals and the related documents were mainly published on orthopaedic academic journals, high school journals and some professional journals which focused on biomedical engineering, tissue engineering, mechanical engineering and material science closely related to digital orthopaedics. Li Xiang, Lu Sheng, Ma Xing, Yan Yongnian and Chen Yubing were prolific authors, but professional researchers group had not been formed. First authors of the theses were all from 3A hospitals and high schools. Xijing Hospital of the Fourth Military Medicine University, Xi’an Jiaotong University and Tsinghua University offered the most documents which indicated the entire academic levels in our country; Xi’an and Beijing were the most active fields, and there existed imbalance in the field distribution. Fund-sponsored articles occupied 63.2% in all documents and most of the funds were from the National Science Foundation, National High-tech R&D Program of China as well as China Post-doctoral Science Foundation, showing the relative documents’ advantage of high starting point, strong scientific research strength and good quality. In addition, the application of RP techniques in the field of orthopaedics had been transferred gradually from basic researches to clinical researches which mainly focused on fabrication of artificial bone, prosthesis design and manufacture, orthopaedic instrument developing as well as computer aided design models, while most clinical researches were concentrating on the therapy for complex fractures of extremities, orthopaedic surgery of extremities malformation, bone neoplasms and spine diseases.