• Ujwal Boddeti, Hanish Polavarapu, Shrey Patel, Aditi Choudhary, Jenna Langbein, Sabrina Nusraty, Sonika Vatsa, Priya Brahmbhatt, and Rida Mitha.
• Department of Neurosurgery, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, USA.
• World Neurosurg. 2024 Jul 1; 187: 194201.e2194-201.e2.

BackgroundSpine surgery accounts for a large proportion of neurosurgical procedures, with approximately 313 million spine surgeries conducted annually worldwide. Considering delayed recovery and postoperative complications that are commonly reported, there has been a recent shift toward minimally invasive spine procedures conducted under local anesthesia. Despite proven success, there exists a limited body of literature on the use of awake surgery in spinal procedures.MethodsA bibliometric analysis was conducted to map the current landscape of work in this field. 190 articles were identified from the Web of Science (Clarivate, NY) database. A comprehensive bibliometric analysis was performed on a narrowed list of the most relevant articles using Bibliometrix, an R-based programming tool.ResultsThere has been a rise in academic papers published on the topic of awake spine surgery since 2016, with an increase in publication count by approximately 18% annually and each article cited approximately ten times on average to date. The year 2022 saw an uptick in publications, with 9 throughout the entire year. The most impactful article, with a total of 95 citations, was published by Sairyo et al.1 Thematic analysis revealed that the terms "lumbar spine" and "stenosis" are well-developed topics in the literature, whereas the topics of "complications," "fusion," and "cost-analysis" are less well-developed topics.ConclusionsThis study provides a comprehensive overview of the most-cited articles in the field of awake spine surgery. Specifically, it identifies areas that are well represented in the literature and those which are underrepresented and should be areas of continued future research.Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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