Eur J Cardiothorac Surg 2006;29:265
© 2006 Elsevier Science NL
Preoperative statin use and in-hospital outcomes following heart surgery in patients with unstable angina
Kosmas I. Paraskevas
*
Department of Vascular Surgery, Athens University Medical School, Athens, Greece
Received 23 October 2005;
accepted 3 November 2005.
* Address for correspondence: 11, Riga Feraiou Street, Pefki 15121, Athens, Greece. Tel.: +30 6977 776202; fax: +30 210 3215792. (Email: paraskevask{at}hotmail.com).
Key Words: Statins • Heart surgery • Statins and perioperative morbidity • Statins and perioperative mortality
While gathering data for a review article on the role of statins in reducing perioperative morbidity and mortality in patients undergoing vascular surgery operations, I read with interest the two articles by Ali and Buth [1,2] and found that the two manuscripts are almost identical. More precisely:
- 1. In the Introduction section, the whole first paragraph (The class of drugs ... preceding percutaneous interventions), a total of 23 lines, is identical in the two manuscripts.
- 2. The whole Materials and Methods (2.1. Patient selection – 38 lines), the whole Data Analysis and Statistics (25 lines), and most of the Results (40 lines) sections are identical; most parts are copied word by word in the two manuscripts.
- 3. In the Discussion section, there are also large parts which are identical in the two manuscripts, namely the parts: (a) "In a laboratory study, Lazar et al. ... and growth factor-mediated prosurvival signaling pathways" (20 lines), (b) "Based upon such theoretical concerns ... perioperative myocardial ischemia-reperfusion injury" (11 lines), (c) "Our results contradict those of a recent small observational study ... resulted in relevant biases in the previous study" (21 lines), and (d) "Another explanation of our results ... may not be ameliorated by pretreatment with statins" (15 lines).
- 4. In addition, most of the Limitations section is copied word by word, namely the parts: "Several limitations are apparent ... and be dose specific" (6 lines), and "Our study is a retrospective analysis ... following cardiac surgery" (8 lines).
- 5. Finally, the title (as well as the references) is almost identical (as expected).
I believe that such an action is unacceptable. It should be condemned and fiercely criticized. It insults not only the journal's reputation, but also the intelligence of the journal's readers.
References
- Ali IS, Buth KJ. Preoperative statin use and in-hospital outcomes following heart surgery in patients with unstable angina. Eur J Cardiothorac Surg 2005;27:1051-1056.[Abstract/Free Full Text]
- Ali IS, Buth KJ. Preoperative statin use and outcomes following cardiac surgery. Int J Cardiol 2005;103:12-18.[Medline]
