Abstract
Background: The study of the most cited works in a particular field gives an indication of the important advances, developments, and discoveries that have had the highest impact in that discipline. Our aim was to identify the most cited works in essential tremor (ET) and dystonia.
Methods: A bibliometric search was performed using the ISI Web of Science database using selected search terms for ET and dystonia for articles published from 1900 to 2015. The resulting citation counts were analyzed to identify the most cited works, and the studies were categorized.
Results: Using the criterion of more than 400 citations, there were four citation classics for ET and six for dystonia. The most cited studies were those on pathophysiology followed by medical treatments, clinical classification, genetic studies, surgical treatments, review articles, and epidemiology studies. A comparison of the most cited articles for ET and dystonia showed that there was a divergence, with ET and dystonia having a higher number of epidemiologic and genetic studies, respectively. Whereas the peak period for the number of publications was 2000–2004 for ET, it was 1995–1999 for dystonia.
Discussion: Given the large number of patients with these disorders, there appears to be an unmet need for further research advances in both areas, but particularly for ET as the most common movement disorder.