JACC retracts OASIS trial paper

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Andrea Natale HRS 2016
Andrea Natale

The Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC) has retracted the paper titled: “Impact of rotor ablation in non-paroxysmal atrial fibrillation patients: Results from the randomized OASIS trial”, which was published in July.

According to an announcement published on JACC online, JACC Editor-in-Chief, its Editorial Board, and the JACC Ethics Board requested the retraction of the paper.

The announcement mentions that the reasons for retraction relate to problems with randomisation: “In the title and multiple times in the article, the study is referred to as a ‘randomised trial’ but deviation from a random allocation of subjects to treatments across sites and the imbalance introduced by a non-random ‘randomisation error’ were not disclosed in the manuscript.” Another reason cited is “registration with ClinicalTrials.gov was not completed before patient enrolment began”.

On 16 September, the study’s last and corresponding author, Andrea Natale (Texas Cardiac Arrhythmia Institute at St David’s Medical Center, Austin, USA) tweeted: “One center’s mistake does not make the study flawed, the process wrong and our research untrustworthy”.

However, prior to his, he suggested on Twitter that industry may have influenced on JACC’s retraction. “We live in the country that invented COI, but industry still decides what we publish and talk about but shame on you if you go against them,” his tweet on 8 September reads.

The OASIS (Outcome of different ablation strategies in persistent and long-standing persistent atrial fibrillation) trial, which was also presented by Natale at the Heart Rhythm Society (HRS) Scientific Sessions in May this year, found “poor outcomes in terms of arrhythmia recurrence” with a rotor-only ablation strategy. The technology used for rotor ablation was RhythmView from Abbott.