A 20-year literature map of robotic RPLND finds 93 total papers, nearly 40% from the US, with Johns Hopkins alone matching the output of every other institution.
Journal: Journal of Robotic Surgery | Published: 2026-06-22 | Type: Bibliometric review | PMID: 42329300 Authors: Demir Demirhan Örsan et al. (Ankara Bilkent City Hospital and affiliated Turkish institutions) Funding/COI: None declared; ethics approval waived — no human subjects, bibliometric data only
This is a literature census, not a clinical study. The authors ran a systematic search across Web of Science, pulled 93 papers on robotic retroperitoneal lymph node dissection (RPLND) for testicular cancer published between 2006 and 2025, then mapped publication trends, citation networks, and institutional output. The headline finding is structural: the US accounts for 39.8% of all papers and 993 of the total citations, with Johns Hopkins University producing 13 publications — equal to the most prolific journal in the field. Ninety-three papers across 20 years is a thin evidentiary base for any major oncologic surgery.
Bibliometric studies map a literature — they do not generate clinical evidence. Within that constraint, the methodology is competent: the search string is broad and documented, two independent reviewers screened records with a third arbiter for disagreements, and the authors used two established tools (Biblioshiny v4.1.3 and VOSviewer v1.6.20) that cover complementary aspects of bibliometric visualization. The exclusion of non-English papers is standard but will systematically undercount output from non-Anglophone centers, which likely reinforces the apparent US dominance.
The sole database choice — Web of Science Core Collection — is a meaningful limitation. Scopus and MEDLINE index different subsets of journals; not cross-checking these risks undercounting. The authors do not quantify how many papers may have been missed.
This paper does exactly what it says and nothing more. If you are a researcher trying to identify where robotic RPLND collaboration is sparse (spoiler: everywhere outside North America and a few European centers), this provides a workable map. For a clinician or patient trying to understand whether robotic RPLND is effective, this paper is useless by design — it counts papers, not outcomes. The finding that a niche robotic procedure is dominated by one country and one institution is not newsworthy; it is the expected structure of any early-phase surgical technology. Competently executed, narrowly scoped, limited clinical relevance.