Studying the place of Iran in the world for medical tourism in infertility fields.

Introduction: As mentioned medical tourism is growing in the world (especially in Asia), patients travel from developed countries to developing countries for treatment with medical tourism. For comparing the country and the region, the h-index is a way to evaluate the productively of the science and scholar. In this research, our goal is to compare the ranking of different regions in the field of embryology, fertilization embryonic development and infertility treatment and then to evaluate Iran's h-index in comparison with other countries. Materials and Methods: We have studied Latin America, Pacific Region, Middle East, Asiatic Region, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Northern America, Northern Africa, Central Africa, and Southern Africa as our key target regions in the time frame of 1996-2012. The data of the documents, citable documents, self-citations, citations per document and H-index of these given regions and countries were obtained automatically and from the SCImago Journal and Country Rank website. Results: As our study shows, Northern America has the highest h-index in the world. The leading countries, in that period, are United Kingdom, United States, Japan, Czech Republic, Argentina, Israel and Australia with the highest h-index. Also Iran is ranked fourth in the Middle East and twelfth in Asia. Conclusion: Iran's treatment costs, private hospitals, ranking, reproductive technology, culture, legal and ethics of infertility treatment are reasons that will important it as a medical center. Since the Iranian medical equipment and potential for medical tourism make it unique in the regions to become a center of infertility treatment in the regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]