Anterior Cruciate Ligament Publications in Asia in 10 Years: A Systematic Review

There have been numerous articles about the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL). But there has been no specific article describing ACL in Asian countries.

This study aims to provide the publications about ACL in Asian countries in the last 10 years.

We searched English full text with keywords “ACL” OR “Anterior Cruciate Ligament” AND “injury” OR “tear” OR “rupture” that were published from January 1st 2010 to December 31st 2019 on PubMed, EMBASE, and Cochrane Library. We included articles with at least one author affiliation in an Asian country. We analyzed the number of published articles per year, top 10 journals with the highest number of publications, top 5 authors with the highest number of published articles in the first order author, top 10 countries with the highest number of published articles, and the type of study.

A total of 821 articles were analyzed, of which 821 were included. Analysis of the number of articles by year revealed that 2019 was the highest number of published articles (n = 150; 18.3%). Study type analysis revealed that clinical research (n = 398; 48.5%) was the most frequent study type. Cohort studies were the most frequent type of clinical research (n = 169; 42.5%). The journal of knee surgery, sports traumatology, arthroscopy (KSSTA) had the highest number of publications in general (n = 108; 13.2%). Jung Ho Noh (n = 8) was the top author with the highest number of published articles in the first author order, and Ryosuke Kuroda (n = 24) was the top author with the highest number of published articles. Japan was the top country with the highest number of published articles (n = 203; 24.7%). Most of the studies (n = 395; 48.1%) were published in high index journals with an impact factor > 1.0.

There has been an increase in the ACL publications among Asian authors over the past 10 years with the high impact journal publishers. This article demonstrates the increased interest in the ACL topic and could be used as a basis for future studies.