Abstract:

BACKGROUND: Vascular endothelial growth factor plays an important role in bone healing.
OBJECTIVE: To provide the valuable bibliometric analytical data addressing the effects of vascular endothelial growth factor on bone healing.
DESIGN: Bibliometric data analysis based on Science citation index (SCI) database within 10 years.
DATA RETRIEVAL: ①A search of related literatures was performed in SCI database using the key words of “vascular endothelial growth factor/VEGF, fracture, healing”. ②The data were analyzed. ③The data were output into pictures and tables to describe the results.
SELECTION CRITERIA: Original researches, reviews and conference proceedings were selected. Letters, editorials, proofreading, essays, short messaging and unpublished articles were excluded.
MAIN OUTCOME MEASUREMENTS: ①Numbers of the literatures; ②Publication year of the documents; ③Distribution of the countries; ④Distribution of the institutions; ⑤Document types; ⑥Analysis of source journals; ⑦Analysis of citation frequency.
RESULTS: A total of 180 papers associated with vascular endothelial growth factor in bone healing in SCI database were searched from January 2002 to December 2011, containing 158 articles and 22 other types of documents. Nine of the articles were cited more than 50 times and considered to be the classic references. Overall, the number of papers was gradually increasing. The Bone published the most papers (n=21, 11.67%), followed by Journal of Bone and Mineral Research (n=13). 
CONCLUSION: Vascular endothelial growth factor in bone healing is the hot spot in recent years. Researches of China in this field are gradually mature and have an important position, and China is important in the number of literature in international database.