OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the awareness of guidelines for the therapeutic monitoring (TDM) of neuropsychiatric drugs by the scientific community, a bibliometric analysis was carried out.
METHODS: Citations of a guideline for TDM of psychotropic drugs from the Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Neuropsychopharmakologie und Pharmakopsychiatrie (AGNP-TDM) were compared with those of a guideline for TDM of antiepileptic drugs from the International League Against Epilepsy (ILAE-TDM), published in Pharmacopsychiatry in 2004 and in Epilepsia in 2008, respectively. Citations for the period 2004-2011 were obtained from the Web of Science database (31 December 2012). The study included an analysis of the geographical distribution of the first authors and of the cited journals. Citing articles were classified according to five categories and 10 subcategories.
RESULTS: The AGNP-TDM and the ILAE-TDM were cited 214 and 67 times, respectively. For the AGNP-TDM, written by 14 authors from German speaking countries, the number of self-citations was 83 (39%). Most citations were found in the following categories: reviews in clinical pharmacology (85 times), clinical pharmacological studies in patients (49). Four out of the 74 different AGNP-TDM citing journals displayed 41% of the citations. The ILAE-TDM was published by five European authors and four authors from the USA. Europe (40) and North America (15) had the highest citation rates. For both guidelines, reviews in clinical pharmacology had the highest percentage of citations, 40% for the AGNP-TDM and 49% for the ILAE-TDM.
CONCLUSION: The observations obtained in this pilot study allowed an analysis of the visibility of two expert guidelines by the scientific community.