Characteristics of global publications about wrist arthroscopy: a bibliometric analysis.

The objective of this study was to provide an assessment of published studies on the wrist arthroscopy. The search was performed from the "Web of Science (WoS) Science Citation Expanded Database" with studies published between January 1, 1990 and March 31, 2011. For research we used the following terms: "Wrist arthroscopy" and "Arthroscopy of the wrist". We located a total of 426 studies about wrist arthroscopic, published in 89 journals over the study period. Of all the publications retrieved (426), original articles were 387 (90.84%), but only two (0.47%) were randomised controlled trials, level 1 of evidence. This study showed there are a large number of studies on wrist arthroscopy, but the level of methodological evidence is low.