Correspondence Address:
Yaseen Arabi
Intensive Care Department, King Abdullah International Medical Research Center, College of Medicine, King Saud bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences, Ministry of National Guard - Health Affairs, Riyadh
Saudi Arabia

Full Text



Sir,

Over the years, the rapid growth in the health-care sector has been followed by an expansion in critical care worldwide.[1] Between 1995 and 2003, there was a considerable increase in critical care research, with USA and Western Europe producing more than 76.7% of the world publications.[2] In the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, critical care research has also been improving significantly over the past 20 years.[3] We examined the scientific contribution of Saudi Arabia in the area of critical care medicine and compared it with the scientific contribution in critical care in selected countries.

We performed a PubMed database search using the following phrases; “Intensive care” OR “Intensive care unit” OR “Critical care” OR “Critical care unit” OR “ICU” OR “Intensive care department” OR “Critically ill patients” OR “critical illness.” We further performed filter search by country starting with “Saudi Arabia” OR “Saudi.” We used the same strategy for other countries. For this study, we considered ten other countries for comparison: the USA, Canada, the UK, Australia, Japan, China, India, Turkey, France, and Brazil. To adjust for the wide variation in the population among these countries, research productivity was adjusted to the country population by dividing the number of publications per year over the reported population according to the 2018 United Nations Population Division estimates.[4]

A total of 1723 articles in the area of critical care medicine were published from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia from January 1, 1979 to December 5, 2018. In comparison, the USA has the largest number of publications (68,939) in critical care, followed by the United Kingdom (25,936), Canada (16,316), Australia (14,949), France (14,689), and China (13,612). After adjusting the population, Australia ranks the highest, followed by Canada, the UK, France, and the USA [Figure 1]a. Most of the research articles from Saudi Arabia published are observational studies (59.2%), followed by clinical trials (15.6%) then meta-analysis, case reports, and comparative studies.{Figure 1}

There has been an increase in the number of publications annually in Saudi Arabia and all other countries, especially after 2005 [Figure 1]b. These figures suggest the large potential for critical care research in Saudi Arabia. Further development would require efforts to build capacity, create systems to have dedicated time for research, and foster collaboration among Saudi centers and with international sites.[5] The Saudi Critical Care Trial Group of the Saudi Critical Care Society represents an important step in moving toward these goals.

Financial support and sponsorship

Nil.

Conflicts of interest

There are no conflicts of interest.

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