Author preferred to cite substantive references rather than meeting abstracts
BMJ 1997; 315 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.315.7112.882 (Published 04 October 1997) Cite this as: BMJ 1997;315:882- Tom Treasure, Professor of cardiothoracic surgerya
Editor—I have received an unusual number of letters and telephone calls praising the style, content, and message of my article on recent advances in cardiac surgery; the article questioned the wisdom of using the popular media for the immediate publication of surgical advances.1 While I was hurt by the letter from Gianni Angelini and Peter Wilde commenting on the article, and was concerned by its distortions, I write only to put the record straight on the allegation of failure to quote published work.2 I referred to an article in the Lancet dated 22 March, entitled “Batista procedure proves its value in the USA,” 3 which opens with the data from Cleveland and Japan presented on 17 March this year. I chose to cite it rather than meeting abstracts. My paper was submitted soon afterwards, on 4 April, and was peer reviewed and revised; the corrected proofs were returned to the BMJ on 22 June. I had chosen a published article from Nature Medicine for general background.4 The brief article from Bristol published in the British Journal of Hospital Medicine appeared in the meantime, after my piece had been submitted, and as it contained no outcome data or new information I preferred to retain the more substantive reference to Nature Medicine. The letter to the Lancet from Bristol (which Angelini and Wilde themselves cite as “in press”) appeared over a month after my article was published, 15 months after their television appearance and newspaper reports, and was certainly not available to me before my article went to the printers. I hope that the feisty letter from my Bristol colleagues will at least have given readers a second opportunity to find my article. I would be pleased to send out a reprint in response to any request.