Bone Quality and Osteoporosis in Shoulder Surgery: A Bibliometric Analysis of Research Trends (2010–2025)

Abstract

AbstractObjective: The aim of this study was to map the literature on bone quality and osteoporosis in shoulder surgery published between 2010 and 2025 using bibliometric methods, and to describe publication and citation trends, the leading journals and authors, the most influential articles, and the principal research themes.Materials and Methods: This was a descriptive bibliometric analysis. The Lens database was searched on 3 July 2026 for journal articles and reviews whose title contained a shoulder-related term and whose title or abstract contained a bone-quality or osteoporosis-related term. A total of 788 records published between 2010 and 2025 were retrieved with full metadata. Annual output, citation impact, journal and author productivity, collaboration, most-cited articles, thematic co-occurrence, Bradford and Lotka distributions, and the h-index of the corpus were analyzed in Python.Results: Annual output rose from 24 articles in 2010 to 109 in 2025 (compound annual growth rate, 10.6%). The articles received 11,596 citations in total (mean 14.7 per article; h-index 52), and the open-access share increased from 12% to about 70%. Thirteen core journals produced roughly one third of all output, led by the Journal of Shoulder and Elbow Surgery. Author productivity followed a Lotka distribution (85% of authors contributed a single article), and collaboration was high (mean 5.4 authors per article). The most-cited articles linked bone quality to rotator cuff healing, proximal humerus fracture fixation, and shoulder arthroplasty.Conclusion: Research on bone quality and osteoporosis in shoulder surgery has grown rapidly and is concentrated in a small core of subspecialty journals produced by a broad, collaborative author community, with the highest-impact work linking bone quality to clinical outcomes.Keywords: Bibliometrics; Osteoporosis; Bone density; Shoulder; Rotator cuff