Top 100 most-cited systematic reviews on robotic-assisted orthopaedic surgery: trends, hotspots, and key contributors.

Robotic-assisted technologies are increasingly used in orthopaedic surgery, including trauma/traumatology applications, driving growing synthesis of clinical and technical evidence. We used the Web of Science database to perform a bibliometric evaluation of the 100 most-cited systematic reviews on robotic-assisted orthopaedic surgery. Records were screened in Rayyan by two independent reviewers, exported as full records with cited references, and standardized through manual harmonization of author names, affiliations, and keywords. Bibliometric indicators and network analyses were generated using bibliometrix (R) and VOSviewer (co-authorship and keyword co-occurrence). The 100 reviews were published between 2013 and 2025 across 33 journals and cited 3,223 references; 42% were open access and 96% were published in English. Publication output peaked in 2021 (18 reviews), while citations peaked in 2025 (864). Across 2013–2025, the annual growth rate of scientific production was 25.99%, and the mean citation count was 34.84 per document. Articles were most commonly published in Archives of Orthopaedic and Trauma Surgery. Authorship comprised 468 contributors (mean 5.15 per review) with 25% international collaboration; country-affiliation output was highest in the United States (37 documents; 37%) and in Europe, led by England (20; 20%) and Germany (8; 8%). Keyword dynamics suggested a shift from early device validation and adverse events toward arthroplasty and spine applications, meta-analytic and randomized-trial signals, and recent attention to learning curves and cost-effectiveness. This mapping outlines the field’s evolving priorities and highlights the need for standardized reporting and pragmatic comparative and economic evaluations aligned with functional outcomes and complications.