• K Schreiber and C H Kindler.
• Abteilung für Anästhesie und Intensivmedizin, St. Josef-Hospital, Troisdorf.
• Anaesthesist. 2005 Nov 1;54(11):1094-9.

BackgroundIn the last 20 years molecular biology has expanded the horizons of medical research including anaesthesia. Preoperative identification of genetic disorders relevant to anaesthesia or increased perioperative risk will be available in the near future using molecular biology techniques. There has been a global increase of such publications, but the contributions from Germany, Switzerland and Austria are unknown.Material And MethodsAn internet-based medline search was used to analyse specific features such as year of publication, journal and origin of molecular biology articles produced by German, Swiss and Austrian anaesthesia institutions from 1988 to 2002.ResultsDuring the study period 121 articles from German institutions were published, 18 from Switzerland and 5 from Austria, corresponding to 10%, 1.5% and 0.4%, respectively, of global publications. In Germany the number of anaesthesia publications with a molecular biology content has continuously increased, but in Switzerland and Austria the numbers have remained constant. The majority of articles were published in high-impact non-anaesthesia journals.Discussion And ConclusionThe results of this study show the quantitative development of molecular biology research that has been done in anaesthesia institutions in Germany, Switzerland and Austria from 1988 to 2002. A continuous increase of publications with a molecular biology content occurred only in Germany.

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