In 1958, a Georgetown professor opined in JAMA that “[M]edical knowledge has grown enormously in recent years, and there have been exciting and sometimes frightening effects upon medical education, research, and medical practice.”
In 2011, an Iowa academic physician quantified this effect, estimating that the doubling time of medical knowledge would decrease from 50 years in 1950 to 73 days by 2020.
In that vein, 253,044 ophthalmology articles have been published in peer-reviewed, English-language journals, including over 16,000 in the last year alone.
Synthesizing this ever-growing corpus of research is as important as ever. We’ve therefore created a report on the 10 most popular ophthalmology articles of the last year, decade and all-time.
The Top 10 Ophtho Articles of the Last Year (n=107,173)
The Eye Pupil Adjusts to Illusorily Expanding Holes. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. 05/30/2022. Score: 1844. Link
Bioengineered corneal tissue for minimally invasive vision restoration in advanced keratoconus in two clinical cohorts. Nature Biotechnology. 08/11/2022. Score: 1783. Link
Retinal pathological features and proteome signatures of Alzheimerís disease. Acta Neuropathologica. 02/11/2023. Score: 1058. Link
Characteristics and Clinical Ocular Manifestations in Patients with Acute Corneal Graft Rejection after Receiving the COVID-19 Vaccine: A Systematic Review. Journal of Clinical Medicine. 08/02/2022. Score: 805. Link
Artificial intelligence-enabled retinal vasculometry for prediction of circulatory mortality, myocardial infarction and stroke. British Journal of Ophthalmology. 10/04/2022. Score: 804. Link
Association of sleep behaviour and pattern with the risk of glaucoma: a prospective cohort study in the UK Biobank. BMJ Open. 11/01/2022. Score: 788. Link
Vision and Concussion: Symptoms, Signs, Evaluation, and Treatment. Pediatrics. 07/18/2022. Score: 741. Link
Long-term Outcomes of Adding Lutein/Zeaxanthin and ω-3 Fatty Acids to the AREDS Supplements on Age-Related Macular Degeneration Progression. JAMA Ophthalmology. 07/01/2022. Score: 739. Link
Risk of Ocular Adverse Events Associated With Use of Phosphodiesterase 5 Inhibitors in Men in the US. JAMA Ophthalmology. 05/01/2022. Score: 690. Link
Aflibercept Monotherapy or Bevacizumab First for Diabetic Macular Edema. New England Journal of Medicine. 08/25/2022. Score: 610. Link
The Top 10 Ophtho Articles of the Last Decade (n=129,164)
Association of Daily Wear of Eyeglasses With Susceptibility to Coronavirus Disease 2019 Infection. JAMA Ophthalmology. 11/01/2020. Score: 5116. Link
Partial recovery of visual function in a blind patient after optogenetic therapy. Nature Medicine. 05/24/2021. Score: 4099. Link
Ocular Surface Erosion after Suspected Exposure to Evaporated COVID-19 Vaccine. Case Reports in Ophthalmology. 12/02/2021. Score: 3532. Link
Transient Smartphone “Blindness”. New England Journal of Medicine. 06/23/2016. Score: 2484. Link
Vision Loss after Intravitreal Injection of Autologous “Stem Cells” for AMD. New England Journal of Medicine. 03/16/2017. Score: 2274. Link
Global Prevalence of Myopia and High Myopia and Temporal Trends from 2000 through 2050. Ophthalmology. 05/01/2016. Score: 2121. Link
Progression of Myopia in School-Aged Children After COVID-19 Home Confinement. JAMA Ophthalmology. 03/01/2021. Score: 2086. Link
Clinically applicable deep learning for diagnosis and referral in retinal disease. Nature Medicine. 08/13/2018. Score: 2076. Link
Identifiable Images of Bystanders Extracted from Corneal Reflections. PLOS ONE. 12/26/2013. Score: 2045. Link
Case Report: Conjunctival Infestation with Thelazia gulosa: A Novel Agent of Human Thelaziasis in the United States. The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. 04/04/2018. Score: 1952. Link
The Top 10 Ophtho Articles in History (n=17,140)
Increased Prevalence of Myopia in the United States Between 1971-1972 and 1999-2004. Archives of Ophthalmology. 12/14/2009. Score: 1009. Link
Prevalence of Age-Related Macular Degeneration in the United States. Archives of Ophthalmology. 04/01/2004. Score: 715. Link
Distribution of Aqueous-Deficient and Evaporative Dry Eye in a Clinic-Based Patient Cohort. Cornea : The Journal of Cornea and External Disease. 05/01/2012. Score: 703. Link
Global Prevalence and Major Risk Factors of Diabetic Retinopathy. Diabetes Care. 02/10/2012. Score: 660. Link
Degree, duration, and causes of visual loss in uveitis. British Journal of Ophthalmology. 09/01/2004. Score: 651. Link
Bright illusions reduce the eye's pupil. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 01/23/2012. Score: 643. Link
Separating color from color contrast. Journal of Vision. 01/15/2008. Score: 626. Link
Effect of a tight necktie on intraocular pressure. British Journal of Ophthalmology. 08/01/2003. Score: 613. Link
Outdoor Activity Reduces the Prevalence of Myopia in Children. Ophthalmology. 08/01/2008. Score: 610. Link
A Randomized, Placebo-Controlled, Clinical Trial of High-Dose Supplementation With Vitamins C and E, Beta Carotene, and Zinc for Age-Related Macular Degeneration and Vision Loss. Archives of Ophthalmology. 10/01/2001. Score: 594. Link
The Fine Print
The search method: After experimentation with PubMed and other search tools, we found the most comprehensive results came via Altmetric’s “attention score”, which finds all articles with an “ophthalmology” classification, and ranks them by the volume of citations or coverage they generate. The score weights, for example, peer-reviewed citations more than news articles, which are in turn weighted far more than a LinkedIn post.
Date cutoffs: The resulting articles are then categorized by publication date: “last year” if published after 3/31/22; "last decade" if published from 4/1/13 - 3/31/22; and “in history” if published before 4/1/13. This structure ensures no article can appear on multiple lists, which both allows readers to enjoy 30 unique articles across the three lists, and also mitigates a recency bias. Meanwhile, we provide each article’s “attention score” to allow our readers to see where articles would rank across different eras.
Recency bias: As mentioned above, the top-ranked articles in most specialties tend to be from within the last 10 years, simply because there are more articles and journals with each passing decade. A groundbreaking article from today can be cited in more places than an article from a generation ago, and therefore may score higher. This recency bias isn’t necessarily bad, as more recent articles are presumably more clinically applicable today. In fact, in the rare event two articles’ scores are precisely tied, we list the newest article first for this reason.
Clinical review: Finally, our team then manually filters each list for clinical relevance, such as by removing articles that focus on basic, animal, or laboratory science rather than applied, clinical research, or those that focus primarily on a different medical speciality.