Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion-Related Publications in Neurosurgery: A Quantitative Analysis of Research Productivity Across Fifty Years

Introduction: Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in neurosurgery carries importance in both academic and clinical settings. Whether neurosurgical literature reflects trends in DEI publication volume is unknown.

Methods: The MEDLINE®/PubMed® Health Disparities and Minority Health Search Strategy was used to find pertinent neurosurgical papers addressing DEI-related topics in Pubmed. Correlation coefficients were used to assess change in publications over time. Rayyan was used to analyze keywords over time.

Results: The search strategy yielded 229 papers published between 1967 (1 paper) and 2023 (24 papers) with an increase across the study period (R2 = 0.529, p< 0.001). Top keywords included humans, male, female, adult, and middle-aged. Thirty-five studies addressed women: one in 1986, 5 in 2023 (R2 = 0.348, p = 0.0062). Top keywords included humans, female, male, middle-aged, and adult. Fifty-seven papers addressed race: one in 2001 and 18 in 2023 (R2 = 0.3979, p = 0.012). Top keywords included humans, female, male, middle aged, and retrospective studies. Forty-five addressed socioeconomic factors: one in 2009 and 12 in 2023 (R2 = 0.3217, p = 0.028). Top keywords included humans, male, female, socioeconomic factors, and United States.

Conclusion : There has been an increase in the number of DEI-related publications in PubMed in the last 60 years across multiple DEI domains. Further efforts are needed to characterize driving factors and key findings of this literature.