Anaesthesia
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Randomised, controlled trials have been retracted after publication because of data fabrication and inadequate ethical approval. Fabricated data have included baseline variables, for instance, age, height or weight. Statistical tests can determine the probability of the distribution of means, given their standard deviation and the number of participants in each group. ⋯ A probability threshold of 1 in 100 for two or more trials by the same author identified three authors of retracted trials (Boldt, Fujii and Reuben) and 21 first or corresponding authors of 65 unretracted trials. Fraud, unintentional error, correlation, stratified allocation and poor methodology might have contributed to the excess of randomised, controlled trials with similar or dissimilar means, a pattern that was common to all the surveyed journals. It is likely that this work will lead to the identification, correction and retraction of hitherto unretracted randomised, controlled trials.
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The majority of UK hospitals now have a Local Lead for Peri-operative Medicine (n = 115). They were asked to take part in an online survey to identify provision and practice of pre-operative assessment and optimisation in the UK. We received 86 completed questionnaires (response rate 75%). ⋯ Respondents were asked to rank their 'top five' priority topics in Peri-operative Medicine from a list of 22. These were: shared decision-making; peri-operative team development; frailty screening and its management; postoperative morbidity prediction; and primary care collaboration. We found variation in practice across the UK, and propose to further explore this variation by examining barriers and facilitators to improvement, and highlighting examples of good practice.