Abstract
The scholarly academic productivity and publication activities of anesthesia departments within the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are currently unknown. We undertook a bibliometric study to quantify UAE anesthetists' contributions to various categories of articles in peer-reviewed high-impact anesthesia journals. Using a PubMed-based analysis, we studied the contribution of United Arab Emirates (UAE) anesthetists towards publications in eight high-impact anesthesia journals (represented in the database for 2023 from Journal Citation Reports®, Thomson Scientific) and four anesthesia subspecialty journals over five years ranging from 2019 to 2023. Additionally, we searched each journal's website for publications related to the individual region of the UAE. We included all categories of articles except correspondences (not free-standing), meeting abstracts, and book reviews. We analyzed the following subsets comprehensively: region of the UAE, author's affiliation to the anesthesia department, publication focus, first authorship, and corresponding author status. UAE anesthetists were involved in 31 publications during the five-year study period. Over 25% of publications originated from the UAE; others were international collaborations. Overall, the anesthesia publication rate in the UAE was less than one per year for one million inhabitants. Only five hospitals contributed more than one publication. The Abu Dhabi Emirate's two main cities (Abu Dhabi and Al Ain) contributed 71% of publications. The UAE anesthetists' primary publication focus was regional anesthesia, medication error, and neurosurgical anesthesia in either the review or original articles category. Our study reveals that the current academic publication output from the anesthesia departments in the UAE is minimal. Our analysis suggests the need for increased scholarly activity, which could significantly advance anesthesia research and practice in the UAE.