An analysis of the most prevalent teledermatology publications: A retrospective scopus database review

Summary: Abstract Body: Telemedicine has become increasingly utilized in dermatology across the last decade as a way to improve access to care. In parallel, numerous studies have been performed to assess teledermatology. We sought to analyze trends in literature focused on teledermatology and to understand the different emphases in teledermatology research. SCOPUS was searched for all publications related to teledermatology from 1994 to 2024. The top 100 most cited articles within this time period were extracted and analyzed. Among the top 100 most cited articles, article citation counts, article types, author lists, and journal impact factors were assessed. Additional information regarding country affiliation and the H-index for the first and senior authors was also analyzed. A univariate ANOVA analysis was used for categorical prediction of article type, gender focus of the first and senior authors, study focus, and the country affiliation for the first and senior author. Meanwhile, a Pearson correlation was used for the continuous variable prediction of journal impact factor, year, and the H-index for the first and senior author. The majority of the top 10 most cited articles were published prior to 2015, and the number of published articles peaked in 2020. Article types were predominantly original articles and review articles, and the focus of publications from 2019-2021 was largely centered around patient diagnosis. When modeling predictive variables in a univariate analysis for total number of publication citations, journal impact factor was a significant predictive variable (p<0.001), while in the multivariate model, both journal impact factor and review article status were significant (p<0.001). These publication trends represent the ongoing interest in telemedicine in dermatology, as well as the importance of review articles and original articles in synthesizing knowledge of teledermatology. Dev Patel¹, Hannah Verma¹, Nathan Ji¹, Kenny Ta², Shiven Sharma¹, Keval Patel³, Omar Alani¹, Dany Alkurdi¹, Katie A. O’Connell³ 1. Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, United States. 2. University of Minnesota Medical School, Minneapolis, MN, United States. 3. Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN, United States. Clinical Research: Epidemiology and Observational Research