Spanish research in gender dysphoria: A review of more than 20 years of biomedical literature.

Abstract

Objective. To provide a bibliometric and contents analyses of the Spanish research in the field of gender dysphoria based on a literature review.

Method. Five international and four national databases, and two platforms were used to retrieve publications using the keyword “gender dysphoria” and related terms. The results were combined with Spain and with the Spanish cities’ names with a hospital. The articles published from the Gender Identity Units (GIUs) being part of the National Health System were selected. The number of citations was assessed using the Science Citation Index (SCI) and Google Scholar.

Results. A total of 179 articles were included. Production shows a progressive increase from 1998 to 2015, and a slight decrease in the following years. 34.6% were published in English, 45.8% were based on set of cases, and the most frequent topic is psychology and mental health (58.1%). The 75 publications indexed in the SCI had received 1,252 citations, and the 152 found in Google Scholar reached 3,105 citations. The highest SCI average citation per article corresponds to those published in English (22.2), based on set of cases (21.1), in the field of neuroimaging (52), and coming from the Catalonia GIU (25.7).

Conclusions. The Spanish research on gender dysphoria produced from the GIUs has had a progressive growth, covers many topics, includes a high number of studies based on set of cases, and the number of citations reflect an impact on the scientific community and international leadership in some areas such as neuroimaging.