Top 100 Most Cited Neurologic and Neurosurgical Articles on COVID-19: A Bibliometric Analysis

Objective With the exponential growth of coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) related literature, we aimed to identify and characterize the 100 most cited COVID-related articles in the field of neurology and neurosurgery. Methods In March 2021, we performed a title-specific search of the Scopus database using the terms (“neurology” or “neurologic” or “neurosurgery” or “neurosurgical”) and “COVID” as our search query term without date restrictions. The top 100 most cited English-language articles were obtained and reviewed. Results Our search yielded 9,648 articles published from December 2019 to March 2021. Bibliometric analysis of the top 100 articles found that (1) the most cited article had a citation count of 1741 and was the first to report on the detailed neurologic manifestations of the disease; (2) Neurology had the most number of publications; (3) the majority of the primary authors were neurologists, but 35% came from non-neuroscience specialties; (4) the United States of America, Italy, United Kingdom, China, and Germany were the top contributors, with a combined total of 77%; (5) most of the publications were correspondence or editorial articles; and (6) most articles discussed the neurologic manifestations and complications of patients with COVID-19. Conclusions This study has identified the top 100 most cited neurologic or neurosurgical COVID-19-related articles published to date. This list can be used to identify high impact studies that will help healthcare practitioners in clinical decision making and researchers in navigating key areas of study and guiding future research.