Scientometric analysis of medicinal leech therapyEngin S ̧ enela,*,Ays ̧egül Taylan€Ozkanb, Kosta Y. MumcuoglucaHitit University Faculty of Medicine, Department of Dermatology and Venerology, Çorum, TurkeybHitit University Faculty of Medicine, Department of Medical Microbiology, Çorum, TurkeycHebrew University Hadassah Medical School, The Kuvin Center for the Study of Infectious and Tropical Diseases, Jerusalem, Israelarticle infoArticle history:Received 3 April 2018Received in revised form28 October 2018Accepted 15 November 2018Available online 6 July 2019Keywords:HirudotherapyLeech therapyMedicinal leech therapyBibliometricsScientometricsPublication trend analysisabstractBackground:Hirudotherapy, also known as medicinal leech therapy, has been used to treat a wide rangeof disorders for thousands of years since Ancient Egypt. Leech therapy is also mentioned as a minimalinvasive technique calledJalaukavacharanain theSushruta Samhita, an ancient Sanskrit text ofAyurvedicmedicine. Although hirudotherapy has become a popular component of complementary medicine in thelast decade, scientometric studies investigating the articles published in thisfield, do not exist.Objective:In this study, we aimed to perform a detailed scientometric analysis of hirudotherapy literature.Materials and methods:We collected data by using four databases provided by Web of Science using thekeywords“hirudotherapy”,“leech therapy”,“medicinal leech”and“medicinal leech therapy”.Results:A total of 834 articles were found of which 89.8% were original articles. USA was the leadingcountry with 280 publications, followed by UK, Germany and France (128, 101 and 41 items, respec-tively). The most productive countries regarding hirudotherapy were the UK (1.93), Slovenia (1.44), andIsrael (1.32). The peak publication year for hirudotherapy literature was 2011 with 41 papers.Conclusion:To the best of our knowledge, our study was thefirst bibliometric and scientometric analysisin thisfield and we believe that multicenter studies and further searches from developing and least-developed countries are needed in hirudotherapy literature.©2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Institute of Transdisciplinary Health Sciencesand Technology and World Ayurveda Foundation. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-NDlicense ).1. IntroductionHirudotherapy or medicinal leech therapy is a traditional,complementary and integrative treatment. Thefirst application ofthis technique was painted in the hieroglyphics from the ancientEgypt over 3500 years ago[1]. Hirudotherapy was also mentionedin ancient historical documents of Arabic, Chinese, Greek and Ro-man medicine to treat conditions such as headache, hypertension,osteoarthritis and hemorrhoids[2]. Leech therapy is also an Ayur-vedic procedure calledJalaukavacharanaorJalaukaand docu-mented in theSushruta Samhita, an ancient Sanskrit text onmedicine and surgery dated 2ndBC in