via Neurology
What happens
when two different groups from two different medical specialties see a patient,
and then write up separate case reports?
Ask teams of
doctors in the neurology and rheumatology departments of the Faculdade de
Medicina, Universidade de São Paulo in Brazil. They both published case reports
about a patient was injured after undergoing chiropractic spinal cord
manipulation. And now both journals have editor’s notes acknowledging dual
publication.
The patient’s case appeared in Neurology as “Spinal Cord Injury, Vertebral Artery Dissection, and Cerebellar Strokes After Chiropractic Manipulation” and as “Breaking the diagnosis: ankylosing spondylitis evidenced by cervical fracture following spine manipulation” in the journal Internal and Emergency Medicine. The two publications included the same figure and reported many of the same details about the patient with undiagnosed ankylosing spondylitis who experienced spinal cord injury and cerebellar strokes after experiencing spinal cord manipulation.
The editors
of both journals published notes flagging the cases, an expression of concern in Internal and Emergency Medicine and a “notice
of dual publication” in Neurology.
The notices
are nearly identical, and state, in part:
Both case reports were written by authors from the Faculdade de
Medicina, Universidade de São Paulo. The authors of the article published
in Internal and Emergency Medicine were affiliated with the
Department of Rheumatology, and the authors of the Neurology article
were affiliated with the Department of Neurology.
The authors
of both articles were contacted and asked for an explanation for the dual
publication. Both teams of authors explained that they cared for the patient
during the hospital admission and that they were unaware of the submission by
the other team.
Although the
patient was the same, as was much of the discussion, the two papers are not,
the journal editors explained:
The focus of
the articles is different: one focuses on bone injury and emergency care, and
the other on the neurological aspects of the case. Both author groups apologize
for the duplicate submissions and agree with this statement.
The
duplicate publication came to light after two chiropractors wrote to Neurology noting the similarities between the two
cases, and expressing concerns that the patient in question did not receive
care from a properly trained chiropractor.
In an email
to Retraction Watch, Neurology journals
executive editor Patricia Baskin said:
We believe we detailed all the information in this situation of
dual publication by two author groups in which each group was unaware that the
other group was also writing a report about the same patient. We had
encountered a similar situation in our journal in 2013, at which time we
posted a similar notification.
When someone
notifies us of a duplicate publication, we do check with the authors and
authorities of the institution to determine the circumstances surrounding the
duplicate publication. In both these instances, we determined that the
duplication was unintentional.
Marina
Barguil Macêdo, who was the corresponding author of the article in Internal and Emergency Medicine and is now at the University of Washington, shared the statement
that she and her colleagues drafted in response to the inquiry about possible
duplicate publication:
We, from the
Rheumatology division, were completely unaware that the Neurology division
submitted a manuscript about the same case to a different journal. Our Hospital
is the largest public teaching hospital of Latin America, so one patient is
commonly seem by different teams, that, despite working together on case
management, hold their scientific discussions separately. We truly lament this
dual publication, but we cannot overemphasize it was by no means intentional.
https://retractionwatch.com/2022/09/16/one-chiropractic-manipulation-patient-injury-two-case-reports-two-editors-notes/
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