Clinical Research
Pulmonary Hypertension
RETRACTED: Syncope in Adults With Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jacc.2011.04.026
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This article has been retracted: please see Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal (http://www.elsevier.com/locate/withdrawalpolicy).

This article has been retracted at the request of the authors, because of a data entry error which is fundamental to the study findings.

As background, this was a clinical study where a specific variable was tested in a large database.

The process involved merging a variable (presence or absence of syncope) from one electronic source with an alternate electronic database of patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension and assessing associations and outcomes. In proceeding to design a follow-up study to this work Dr. Le, went back to the original source file to abstract new data. In doing this she identified a 'cut-and paste' error in which the column of syncope data was transferred incorrectly where syncope/no syncope variables were assigned to wrong subjects. This led to a critical error that then got carried forward and a fundamental misclassification of syncope in the final study group. This error fundamentally affects the results which now do not fully support the conclusions.

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This work was supported in part by an unrestricted research grant from Pfizer to Dr. Maradit-Kremers and by the Mayo Clinic CR20 program to Dr. Kane. Dr. Frantz has received research and education grants, unrelated to this project, from United Therapeutics, Actelion, Pfizer, and Gilead. Unrelated to this project, Dr. McGoon has received research funding from Medtronic and Gilead; served on advisory, steering, and/or endpoint/data and safety monitoring board committees for Actelion, Gilead, LungRx, and Medtronic; and has received honoraria for speaking at conferences supported by Actelion and Gilead. All other authors have reported that they have no relationships relevant to the contents of this paper to disclose.