Objective To investigate how many hospitals can perform vitrectomy and its relationship to economic development in China.Methods Bibliometric data of retina-vitreous literatures were searched from the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) academic databases. We used pars plana vitrectomy (PPV) as a keyword and defined address as mainland China, limited years to 1993 -2009. From those data we analyzed which hospital performed PPV. We also communicated with some hospitals by phone, email to confirm if they were performing PPV. Gross domestic product (GDP), population data and economic development ranking were extracted from the China Statistical Yearbook 2009 (National Bureau of Statistics of China). PPV carry-out rate, PPV-hospital shares and their relationships with the GDP in each regional municipality were analyzed.Results All together this study retrieved 4632 articles meet our requirements. There were 340 hospitals carrying out PPV in mainland China, located in 22 provinces, five autonomous regions and four metropolitan municipalities. The top five provinces with higher PPV carryout rate were Shandong (93,75%), Zhejiang (90,00%), Hebei province (90.00%), Jiangsu (83.33%) and Guangdong (75.00%). There was significant difference in per capita share of PPVhospitals between different cities (chi;2=181,153，P=0,000) and in the PPV carry-out rate between different cities (chi;2=749.217，P=0.000). There were 210 private eye hospitals in China,62 hospitals (18.23%) of them could perform PPV included 39 hospitals located in regionallevel cities. The coefficient correlation between PPV and GDP of different provinces was 0.842 (P=0.000). Conclusions Vitrectomy is widely performed in mainland China, but geographical distribution of PPV-performing hospitals is uneven. PPV performance is closely related with regional economic development,and private hospitals play certain roles in promoting the application of vitrectomy.