A growing burden of gunshot injuries demands evidence-based ballistic trauma management. No comprehensive systematic overview of the current knowledge is available to date. This study aims to identify and analyze the most influential publications in the field of orthopedic ballistic trauma research. All databases available in the Thomson Reuters Web of Knowledge were searched to conduct this bibliometrical study. The most cited orthopedic ballistic trauma articles published between 1950 and 2015 were identified by use of a multistep approach. Publications with ten citations and more were analyzed for citations, journal, authorship, geographic origin, area of research, anatomical site, study type, study category, and level of evidence. Citations of the 128 included studies ranged from 113 to 10. These were published in fifty different journals between 1953 and 2011. Most publications (n=106; 83 %) originated from the USA, were retrospective (n=85; 66.4 %), level IV studies (n=90; 70.3 %), reported on spinal gunshot injuries (n=49; 38.33 %) and were published between 1980 and 2000 (n=111; 86.7 %). This bibliometric study provides the first comprehensive overview of influential publications in the field of orthopedic ballistic trauma research. More prospective studies and high-quality systematic reviews are needed. Centres with a high burden of gunshot injuries from the developing world need to share their experience in form of international publications, to provide a more comprehensive picture of the global gun-related orthopedic injury burden.

Bibliometric analysis level III.