The Top Twenty-Five Most Influential Articles in Surgery for Colorectal Cancer.

Background: This article provides surgical trainees with a ranked list of the foundational literature that guides the contemporary surgical management of colorectal cancer and shows the evolution of surgical techniques in the field. Methods: We assessed the surgical literature using the Web of Science and other ranking systems to create a ranked list of published articles on colorectal cancer surgery. Results: We compiled a ranked list of the top 25 articles in the surgical management of colorectal cancer, based on the citation density score (mean number of citations per year) and the individual author H-index. The mean density score of the 25 papers was 29.9, and the journal most frequently represented on our list was the Annals of Surgery (36% of top papers). The Web of Science (primary) and alternative databases (secondary) H-index values for each author were identified. The range, mean, and median of the primary H-index values were 7.0-84.0, 31.8, and 29.0, respectively. The range, mean, and median of secondary H-index values were 4.0-108.0, 48.6, and 45.0, respectively. A 2-tailed, unpaired t-test was used to determine whether a significant difference existed between the primary and secondary H-index values for primary authors; P = .0376 (95% confidence interval, 1.02-32.58). A citation density score was calculated for each article, which represented the mean number of citations per year. Conclusion: We provided a ranked list (citation density score) of the top-cited 25 articles in colorectal cancer surgery, a ranking of the associated primary authors by H-index, and a comparison of H-index scores between primary and secondary database sources. We believe this list is a useful resource for surgical trainees and researchers in colorectal cancer field and provides easy access to the top papers in this discipline.