Hip, hip, retract! Cobalt poisoning case study pulled as duplicate

The above article recently appeared ahead of print in Hip international. It subsequently became clear that many details of the case report had been published before. It is the duty of authors to submit work which has not (in whole or in part) been published elsewhere. Should published work be partially covered again, this should be acknowledged prominently, and the original publication cited. The above article was accepted because the title (and subsequent text) drew attention to cobalt toxicity. This was the reason for acceptance. The orthopaedic issues (revision to hard on hard bearings in such cases) are already well understood and would not have merited publication. Unfortunately, Hip International cannot proceed with publication of duplicated (or partially duplicated) work, and the article has been retracted.

We couldn’t find an earlier paper from this group of authors — on the same subject. But we did come across more than one case study on by other researchers on cobalt toxicity after hip arthroplasty in Muscle & Nerve, the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery and the Medical Journal of Australia.