Purpose: To evaluate and compare trends in different categories of pediatric and adult ophthalmology publications.
Methods: Publications in ophthalmology between January 1, 1998, and December 31, 2012, were retrieved from PubMed. An age filter separated pediatric from adult articles.
Results: There was a significant linear increase in the number of publications in both pediatric and adult publications. There was an increase over time in pediatric and adult clinical trials, letters to the editor, meta-analyses, and systematic reviews. There was a significant increase in adult randomized controlled trials only. No meaningful statistical analyses could be conducted for practice guidelines.
Conclusions: Pediatric and adult ophthalmology have demonstrated a significant increase in annual published articles. Practicing ophthalmologists have an increasing number of articles to read and might become more and more dependent on search engines and reviews to remain informed, emphasizing the need for official practice guidelines that are, unfortunately, seldom published.
Copyright 2015, SLACK Incorporated.