Testicular cancer: a bibliometric review of the Middle East and North African region.

Background: Testicular cancer is the most common solid malignancy diagnosed in young men. The incidence of testicular cancer has been on the rise over the last decades including in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Our objective is to perform a review on research publications from countries in the MENA region about Testicular cancer and map these results across the cancer care pathway. Main body: A search was conducted on PubMed, Medline, and Scopus about testicular cancer and the MENA region between 2000 and 2020. Research output, publication trends, study designs, research questions, funding, collaborations, authors affiliation, and author gender disparities were assessed across the MENA region. Our search yielded a total of 1026 publications of which 462 articles were selected. There has been a steady rise in publications over these 20 years. It was notable that Turkey had the largest proportion (56.7%) accounting for 262 publications. Testicular cancer publications across the cancer care pathway showed that most studies focused on diagnosis (48.9%), whereas the most common study type was case reports (48.3%). Female authorship was mostly present in basic science publications 82% whereas female presence was only evident in 57.1% of publications. Conclusion: Several limitations hinder testicular cancer research in the MENA region. Analysis of the collected data revealed significant gaps related to a low number of impactful original articles, randomized controlled trials, and basic science research. Potential areas for improvement include creation of standardized oncology registries, increasing research related funding, and expanding collaborations with healthcare institutions abroad.