Abstract:

BACKGROUND: The total hip arthroplasty after 30 years of clinical practice, has been fully affirmed and has developed into a reliable means of treatment.
OBJECTIVE: To multivariately analyze the literature on the complications after hip replacement through Science Citation Index (SCI) database and its analysis tool.
DESIGN: Bibliometric analysis. 
DATA RETRIEVAL: A retrieval was performed for the literature of the complications after hip arthroplasty, including hip arthroplasty, loosening, infection, fracture, dislocation during 2001-01 and 2010-12 in SCI database. The retrieval results were analyzed, and the trends were described in words and graphics.
SELECTIVE CRITERIA: Articles on the complications after hip arthroplasty including the following types: (1)Peer-reviewed original paper; (2)Proceedings paper; (3)Reviews; (4)Letters; (5)Editorial materials; (6)Conference abstrcts; (7)Reprint; (8) Corrections. Exclusive criteria were included (1)Articles unrelated to the study of the complications after hip replacement. (2)Articles published before 2001. (3)Articles which were not published on journals.
MAIN OUTCOME MEASUREMENTS: The literatures were analyzed by publication year, national distribution, institutional information, journal distribution, discipline distribution, fund agents, citation frequency and authors.
RESULTS: A total of 5 602 literatures on the complications after hip arthroplasty were retrieved in SCI database from 2001 to 2010, in which most of paper were published as original articles. Eight articles were identified as classic literature. The overall number of literature had an upward trend from 2001 to 2010. Journal of Arthroplasty published most papers in this field (n=747, 13.34%).
CONCLUSION: This paper provides a valuable reference for researchers to understand the overview and present situation of this field in order to set further research.