OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the scientific contribution of Brazilian spine surgeons not only in number of publications, but also their quality between January 2000 to December 2011. METHODS: A research of publications by Brazilian spinal surgeons on topics concerning the spine or spinal cord was performed using an online data-base; Pubmed.gov. The results were limited to articles published from January 2000 to December 2011. A total of 1,778 articles were identified after a Medline search. After exclusion criteria, 206 papers were selected. The quality of the Journals was assessed with Impact Factor (IF), and the Qualis CAPES, and the article quality using the Oxford classification. RESULTS: An increasing number of publications by Brazilian spine surgeons was observed. 45.1% of those papers were published during the last 4 years (2008 - 2011). Clinical studies and case reports were the most frequent types of article published (37.5% vs 31.1%). An increasing number of Brazilian publications in non-Brazilian journals has been observed in recent years (linear-by-linear association: 5.449, P = 0.020). The Arquivos de Neuro-Psiquiatria was the most frequent journal in which the papers were published (n=67, 32%). The IF of the publications varied from 0.021 to 8.017. The analysis of quality of the articles using the Oxford classification demonstrated that most of them provided LOE 4 (N = 113, 54.9%) or 5 (N = 45, 21,8%). CONCLUSIONS: There has been an increasing in the number and quality of publications by Brazilian spine surgeons in recent years. Also, the number of publications by Brazilians in non-Brazilian journals has increased in recent years.
Spine; Scientific and technical publications; Periodicals; Bibliometrics; Research; Brazil
