Objective: The citation number of an article gives us information about its quality and contribution to science. In this article, we aimed to find the most frequently cited article in general surgery from Turkey, and evaluate how these articles in general surgery contributed to the world literature.
Material and methods: We used the science citation index expanded database to find the most frequently cited articles in general surgery from Turkey.
Results: Among the 52 articles found, the most common subjects were as follows: hydatid cyst (21.1%), pilonidal disease (15.4%), laparoscopic operations (15.4%), breast diseases (11.5%), and inguinal hernia (7.7%). Two articles were cited in more than 100 articles. Furthermore, 48.8% of the articles were published from three major cities. Most articles were published between 2000 and 2004, and 65.4% of articles were case series.
Conclusion: Most of the cited articles were about hydatid cyst and pilonidal disease, which are more common in the Turkish population compared with other countries. Evaluation of most cited articles is important to identify the fields in which Turkey contributes to the world literature.
Keywords: General surgery; citation; medical article.