African primary research publications in plastic surgery: A PRISMA-S-compliant systematic review.

Background: Plastic surgery (PS) in Africa is a relatively young surgery specialty, and the number of available plastic surgeons on average is one or two surgeons per country in many African low-income countries. This systematic review aims to geographically map the research activities through scientific publications of African PS centres, between February 2012-February 2023.

Methods: We searched four literature databases (Medline, Embase, Google Scholar and African Journal Online) and did a manual search.