Diminishing Basic Science Research Experience Among United States Cardiothoracic Surgery Trainees.

Introduction: There is growing concern regarding the attrition of surgeon-scientists. To understand the decline of basic science research (BSR), it is essential to examine trends in research conducted by trainees. We hypothesized that, over recent decades, cardiothoracic (CT) surgery trainees have published fewer BSR articles.

Analyzing the Scholarly Impact of Cardiothoracic Surgery Research Using the Relative Citation Ratio.

Introduction: The National Institutes of Health (NIH) recently developed the relative citation ratio (RCR), calculated as article citations benchmarked to NIH-funded publications in the same field. Here, we characterized the scholarly impact of academic cardiothoracic (CT) surgeons and their research using the RCR.

Materials And Methods: Using a database of 992 CT surgeons, we calculated the RCR for all articles published by each surgeon since 1980 using the NIH iCite database.