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Topic · Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine

Pain Management and Opioid Use

Pain Management and Opioid Use is a research topic within Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine. Science Explorer counts 29k research works in it since 1950. 10.1% of them reached the world's top 10% most cited for their field and year.

This cluster of papers covers a wide range of topics related to pain management, with a focus on challenges in treating postoperative pain, cancer-related pain, and persistent pain in elderly patients. It also explores the genetic basis for individual variations in pain perception and the use of opioid analgesics. The papers discuss the prevalence of pain, assessment tools, and the impact of pain management on quality of life.

  • Pain Management
  • Cancer Pain
  • Opioid Analgesics
  • Elderly Patients
  • Genetic Variability
  • Postoperative Pain
  • Neurolytic Block
  • Pain Assessment Tools
  • Patient-Controlled Analgesia
  • Quality of Life
Research works
29k
fractional, since 1950
In the world top 10%
2.9k
per year above
Top-10% rate
10.1%
share of its works in the world top 10%
Growth, 2018-21 → 2022-25
+7%
the tick is no change
Largest producer
United States
48% of the 10 largest, 2022-now
Pain Management and Opioid Use

This ranks research output and citation impact. It says nothing about the quality of diagnosis, treatment or care.

Which countries lead Pain Management and Opioid Use research?

By volume, the United States and China publish the most (2.2k and 553 works in 2022-now).

By volume, 2022-now

  1. 1 United States 2.2k works
  2. 2 China 553 works
  3. 3 India 347 works
  4. 4 United Kingdom 324 works
  5. 5 Canada 251 works
  6. 6 Australia 218 works
  7. 7 Germany 208 works
  8. 8 Türkiye 198 works
  9. 9 Japan 181 works
  10. 10 Spain 158 works

How concentrated that is

The same countries as shares of everything the list above accounts for. A node where two countries do two thirds of the work and one spread evenly across twelve read alike as a ranking and not at all alike here.

United States: 47.7%China: 11.9%India: 7.4%United Kingdom: 6.9%6 others listed: 26.0%48%largest
United States2,225 · 47.7%China553 · 11.9%India347 · 7.4%United Kingdom324 · 6.9%6 others listed1,214 · 26.0%

Shares of the rows listed above, not of the whole node.

Which institutions lead Pain Management and Opioid Use research?

By volume in 2022-now, Harvard University publishes the most Pain Management and Opioid Use research, followed by United States Department of Veterans Affairs and University of Toronto.

By volume, 2022-now

  1. 1 Harvard UniversityUnited States 90 works
  2. 2 United States Department of Veterans AffairsUnited States 53 works
  3. 3 University of TorontoCanada 49 works
  4. 4 All India Institute of Medical SciencesIndia 43 works
  5. 5 Mayo ClinicUnited States 40 works
  6. 6 Johns Hopkins UniversityUnited States 36 works
  7. 7 The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer CenterUnited States 33 works
  8. 8 University of California, San FranciscoUnited States 31 works
  9. 9 The Ohio State UniversityUnited States 31 works
  10. 10 Stanford UniversityUnited States 30 works

Who are the leading researchers in Pain Management and Opioid Use?

The most-cited researchers publishing on Pain Management and Opioid Use include George Davey Smith, Jun Wang and Gordon Henry Guyatt.

  1. 1 George Davey Smith United Kingdom 435k citations
  2. 2 Jun Wang China 340k citations
  3. 3 Gordon Henry Guyatt Canada 315k citations
  4. 4 Dan J. Stein South Africa 306k citations
  5. 5 Peter Jüni Switzerland 303k citations

Ranked by citations received across their whole record, among researchers with at least three works on this topic.

What are the most cited papers in Pain Management and Opioid Use?

The most cited paper in Pain Management and Opioid Use is "Improvements in survival and clinical benefit with gemcitabine as first-line therapy for patients with advanced pancreas cancer: a randomized trial." (Howard A. Burris, Malcolm J. Moore, John Sahl Andersen et al., 1997), with 5,935 citations. Next come "Clinical importance of changes in chronic pain intensity measured on an 11-point numerical pain rating scale" (5,825) and "Survey of chronic pain in Europe: Prevalence, impact on daily life, and treatment" (5,568).

Most cited papers
#PaperReleasedCitations
1 Improvements in survival and clinical benefit with gemcitabine as first-line therapy for patients with advanced pancreas cancer: a randomized trial. Howard A. Burris, Malcolm J. Moore, John Sahl Andersen et al. · Journal of Clinical Oncology Jun 1997 5,935
2 Clinical importance of changes in chronic pain intensity measured on an 11-point numerical pain rating scale John T. Farrar, James P. Young, Linda LaMoreaux et al. · Pain Nov 2001 5,825
3 Survey of chronic pain in Europe: Prevalence, impact on daily life, and treatment Harald Breivik, Beverly Collett, Vittorio Ventafridda et al. · European Journal of Pain Open access 11 Aug 2005 5,568
4 Pain assessment: global use of the Brief Pain Inventory. Cleeland Cs, Ryan Km · PubMed Mar 1994 5,290
5 CDC Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain—United States, 2016 Deborah Dowell, Tamara M. Haegerich, Roger Chou · JAMA Open access 15 Mar 2016 5,206
All 99 most cited papers, with filters and sorting

Where is Pain Management and Opioid Use research done?

The largest centres of Pain Management and Opioid Use research in 2022-now are Boston (United States), New York (United States), London (United Kingdom) and Toronto (Canada).

Largest cities, 2022-now

  1. 1 BostonUnited States 95 works
  2. 2 New YorkUnited States 94 works
  3. 3 LondonUnited Kingdom 86 works
  4. 4 TorontoCanada 71 works
  5. 5 PhiladelphiaUnited States 64 works
  6. 6 BaltimoreUnited States 63 works
  7. 7 BeijingChina 63 works
  8. 8 IstanbulTürkiye 61 works
  9. 9 SeoulSouth Korea 58 works
  10. 10 HoustonUnited States 58 works
See Pain Management and Opioid Use on the map

Where is the best place to study Pain Management and Opioid Use?

Among universities, judged by research, Harvard University, Sichuan University and University of Toronto score highest, combining excellence, specialisation, size, growth and international reach. Research strength is one signal when choosing where to study; it does not measure teaching.

0%20%40%mean 18.67%fractional works in this field (log) →share of work in the world top 10% →Sichuan UniversityUniversity of Califo…Harvard UniversityUniversity of Toronto
above the meannear itbelow it

One dot per university in the first ten of the table below, at the default weights. The upper left is the interesting corner: small places doing unusually strong work.

Excellenceshare of its work in the world top 10%, 2022-now and all time averaged
40%
Specialisationhow much of its work is in this field, counted up to 10× the world share
10%
Sizeits output in this field, on a log scale
30%
Growthoutput growth, counted from -20% to +20%
10%
Internationalshare of its work with a co-author abroad
10%
Each slider sets a weight; the share it gets of the score is beside it.
#UniversityScoreTop 10%SpecialisationWorksGrowth
1Harvard UniversityUnited States 69.614.8%4.9×90 -8.4%
2Sichuan UniversityChina 69.125.3%2.0×26 +122.0%
3University of TorontoCanada 60.512.2%4.2×49 -9.6%
4University of California, San FranciscoUnited States 56.816.6%7.5×31 -9.4%
5University of CopenhagenDenmark 54.818.8%2.9×16 +3.5%
6University of LausanneSwitzerland 54.216.6%3.6×10 +90.5%
7Huazhong University of Science and TechnologyChina 53.831.3%1.1×11 +60.5%
8The University of SydneyAustralia 53.613.5%3.6×25 +13.0%
9Duke UniversityUnited States 53.414.7%5.0×24 +6.1%
10Erasmus University RotterdamNetherlands 53.422.9%3.0×9 +16.0%

Universities only. The score blends excellence (40%), size (30%), specialisation (10%), growth (10%), international reach (10%), 2022-now; growth compares 2018-21 with 2022-25 and counts up to +20%, since a jump from a small base is mostly noise.

Every institution in Pain Management and Opioid Use, country by country

Is Pain Management and Opioid Use research growing?

Output in 2022-2025 was 7% higher than in 2018-2021, peaking in 2025. The fastest-growing topics are Pain Management and Opioid Use.

still counting19801990200020102020
grewheldshrank

The same series as a ribbon: one cell per year, darker for more. The line above answers how much; this answers when.

Its share of all research

Growing output can still be a shrinking share: all of science grows. This is Pain Management and Opioid Use as a percentage of every work published that year, 0.025% in 2024.

still counting0.020%0.040%Pain Management and Opioid Use0.030% in 202519801990200020102020

Fractional works of Pain Management and Opioid Use over all fractional works that year. How the balance of science has shifted.

How much of it reaches the world top 10%

Year by year.

still counting5%10%15%Pain Management and Opioid Use10.0% in 2025200020102020

Of each year's works in it, the share that reached the world's 10% most cited for their field and year. A field is the world for its own topics, so there is no other line to hold it against.

Which topics inside it are moving

Growth and decline on one axis around a shared zero. Two lists side by side hide the thing that matters: whether the growth dwarfs the decline, or the other way round.

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