Gender Dysphoria Publication Trends: A Bibliometric Analysis between 1900 and 2018

Abstract

Objective Research on gender dysphoria (GD) has been growing over the last decades with increasing interest in understanding and characterizing the causal relationships between psychological, genetics, hormonal, and sociocultural factors. Changes and acceptance of this condition as non-pathologic have led to significant changes in general perspective and its management over time. Our objective is to carry out a bibliometric analysis to know the publication trends and quality of evidence related to gender dysphoria. Methods A systematic search and critical review of the literature was carried out between January 1900 and December 2018 to perform a bibliometric analysis. Research was done in the following databases: OVID, PubMed, EMBASE, Scopus, Web of Science and Google Scholar. The medical subject headings (MeSh) terms used were: gender dysphoria; and surgery and psychology. The results were plotted using the VOSviewer version 1.6.8. Statistical analyses were performed with the IBM SPSS, Version 25.0. Results A total of 1,239 manuscripts were identified, out of which 1,041 were selected. The average number of cited times per year per manuscript is 1.84 (interquartile range [IQR] 0-2.33). The average impact index was 47.8 (IQR 20-111.6). The median of total citations per manuscript was 3 (IQR 0-33.1), and the highest number of citations per manuscript was 484. Most publications focus on the psychological aspects of GD, and there is a significant amount of manuscripts related to social and anthropological issues. Most articles have a low level of scientific evidence. Conclusion There is a great amount of published literature on GD; however, there is a significant level of disagreement in many respects on this topic. Regarding surgical gender-affirmation, there is a lack of information supported by high level of evidence to uphold the emerging expansion of medical practices.