Table 2. Top 10 articles on early thoracotomy and decortication in pleural empyema ranked by citation per year (CPY) metric.

Sr. No.: serial number, PY: publication year, CC: citation count, CPY: citation per year, USA: United States of America, UK: United Kingdom

Journal Title A: Proc Am Thorac Soc, B: CHEST, C: Eur Respir J, D: Am J Respir Crit Care Med, E: J Pediatr Surg, G: Eur J Cardiothorac Surg, I: Clin Infect Dis, N: J Thorac Oncol

Category 1: parapneumonic effusions, 2: empyema, 3: review, 4: treatment, 5: pediatric empyema, 6: video-assisted surgery, 9: clinical trial, 10: fibrinolytic therapy, 11: adult, 12: retrospective chart review, 16: infections, 19: oncology, 20: decortication, 21: consensus statement

Sr. No.	PY	Authors	Journal	Article Title	Category	Country	Citation Count (CC)	Citation Per Year (CPY)
1	2006	Light	A	Parapneumonic Effusions and Empyema [8]	1, 2, 3	USA	650	36.11
2	2009	St. Peter et al.	E	VATS versus fibrinolysis for pediatric empyema [14]	5, 6, 9, 10	USA	323	21.53
3	2006	Sonnappa et al.	D	Urokinase and VATS in Childhood Empyema [11]	4, 5, 6	UK	399	21.17
4	2015	Scarci et al.	G	EACTS expert consensus statement for surgical management of pleural empyema [35]	4, 6, 16, 21	UK	182	20.22
5	1997	Wait et al.	B	A Randomized Trial of Empyema Therapy [9]	1, 4	USA	498	18.44
6	2007	Molnar	G	Surgical treatment of adult empyema [16]	3, 11	Hungary	295	17.35
7	1997	Hamm et al.	C	Parapneumonic effusion and empyema [10]	1, 2, 3	Germany	425	15.74
8	2012	Lang-Lazdunski et al.	N	Management of Patients with Malignant Pleural Mesothelioma [33]	4, 19, 20	UK	186	15.5
9	2005	Luh et al.	B	VATS in Complicated Parapneumonic Effusions or Empyemas [17]	1, 6, 12	Taiwan	291	15.32
10	2007	Sahn	I	Diagnosis and Management of Parapneumonic Effusions and Empyema [19]	1, 2, 3	USA	260	15.29