“Significant” copying forces retraction of sternotomy paper

Interactive Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery has yanked a 2005 sternotomy paper by a group of researchers who plagiarized from an earlier article on the subject.

The article, “The complications of repeat median sternotomy in paediatrics: six-months follow-up of consecutive cases,” came from a team at Glenfield Hospital in Leicester, England, and has been cited eight times, according to Scopus.

Here’s the notice:

This article has been retracted at the request of the Editor-in-Chief of Interactive CardioVascular and Thoracic Surgery after a third party brought to his attention that a significant amount of text has been copied from the article “Risks of Repeat Sternotomy in Pediatric Cardiac Operations by Jennifer L. Russell, Jacques G. LeBlanc, Suvro S. Sett, and James E. Potts published in Ann Thorac Surg 1998;66:1575–8” without permission and proper acknowledgement of the source. The Editor-in-Chief apologises to the authors of the article published in the Annals of Thoracic Surgery and to the readers of this Journal.

Now, the plagiarizers here might have a brief against another group of authors. We did a little Googling of the abstract of the ICTS article, in particular this rather clumsy line from the abstract:

Repeat median sternotomy in paediatrics though associated with increased perioperative risks, yet the incidence of injury to the underlying structures during sternal re-entry is poorly quantified.

Lo and behold, it turns up verbatim in this 2006 article in the Internet Journal of Anesthesiology, “Retrospective Study Of Redo Cardiac Surgery In A Single Centre“:

Repeat median sternotomy in pediatrics though associated with increased perioperative risks, yet the incidence of injury to the underlying structures during sternal re- entry is poorly quantified.