What ’ s Hot — and Not — in Spine Research ? |
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Researchers from Mount Sinai Health System in New York set out to get an idea of the “ hot ” and “ cold ” topics in spine research over time . Their work , “ Natural language processing reveals research trends and topics in The Spine Journal over two decades : a topic modeling study ,” appears in the March 2024 edition of The Spine Journal .
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“ The field of spine research is rapidly evolving , with new research topics continually emerging ,” co-author Konstantinos Margetis M . D ., Ph . D ., director of Complex Spine Surgery , Department of Neurosurgery , Mount Sinai Hospital , told OTW .
“ Analyzing topics and trends in the literature can provide insights into the shifting research landscape . This study aimed to elucidate prevalent and emerging research topics and trends within The Spine Journal using a natural language processing technique called topic modeling . This is almost impossible to do it manually with conventional methods because it is very time intensive . Therefore , we used natural language processing methodology .”
To review articles from The Spine Journal , the team used BERTopic , a topic modeling technique rooted in natural language processing . The team directed BERTopic to “ read ” 3,358 documents and vectorize the content into 30 distinct topics .
The most frequently identified topics were :
• “ Outcome Measures ,”
• “ Scoliosis ,” and
• “ Intradural Lesions .”
Throughout the history of the journal , the three hottest topics were :
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• “ Degenerative Cervical Myelopathy ,”
• “ Osteoporosis ,” and
• “ Opioid Use .”
Conversely , the coldest topics were :
• “ Intradural Lesions ,”
• “ Extradural Tumors ,” and
• “ Vertebral Augmentation .”
Within the current decade , the hottest topics were :
• “ Screw Biomechanics ,”
• “ Paraspinal Muscles ,” and
• “ Biologics for Fusion ,”
And the cold topics were :
• “ Intraoperative Blood Loss ,”
• “ Construct Biomechanics ,” and
• “ Material Science .”
Dr . Margetis added : “ Rising trends , such as ‘ Screw Biomechanics ,’ ‘ Paraspinal Muscles ,’ and ‘ Biologics for Fusion ,’ denote rising themes of interest in spine
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research , stimulated by technological progress , novel findings , and evolving healthcare needs .”
“ Declining trends , like ‘ Intraoperative Blood Loss ,’ ‘ Construct Biomechanics ,’ and ‘ Material Science ,’ suggest either maturing or underrepresented areas that might require further exploration .”
Looking forward , Dr . Margetis told OTW , “ While the theoretical advantages of BERTopic over traditional methods like Latent Dirichlet Allocation are promising , comprehensive validation of these advantages remains challenging .”
“ The gold standard for validation would involve human experts manually reviewing and categorizing thousands of abstracts — a task that is not just time-consuming but also practically unfeasible due to the sheer volume and complexity of the data . We acknowledge this as a significant limitation , and while we are confident in the potential of BERTopic based on its foundational methodologies and our observations , we recognize the need for rigorous validation .” — EH
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