Unverifiable and erroneous publications reported by obstetrics and gynecology residency applicants.

OBJECTIVE: To estimate the rate of erroneous and unverifiable publications in applications for an obstetrics and gynecology residency and to determine whether there were associated characteristics that could assist in predicting which applicants are more likely to erroneously cite their publications. METHODS: This was a review of the Electronic Residency Application Service applications submitted to the University of Washington obstetrics and gynecology residency for the 2008 and 2009 matches. Publications reported to be peer-reviewed articles and abstracts were searched by querying PubMed, Google, and journal archives (first tier), topic-specific databases (second tier), and by e-mailing journal editors (third tier). Errors were categorized as minor, major, and unverified. RESULTS: Five-hundred forty-six (58%) of 937 applicants listed a total of 2,251 publication entries. Three-hundred fifty-three applicants (37.7%) listed 1,000 peer-reviewed journal articles and abstracts, of which 751 were reported as published and 249 as submitted or accepted. Seven-hundred seventy (77.0%) publications were found by a first-tier search, 51 (5.1%) were found by a second-tier search, 23 (2.3%) were found by a third-tier search, and 156 (15.6%) were unverified. Of the 353 applicants listing peer-reviewed articles or abstracts, 25.5% (90 of 353) committed major errors, 12.5% (44 of 353) committed minor errors, and 24.1% (85 of 353) had articles or abstracts that were unverified. CONCLUSION: Most applicants reported their publications accurately or with minor errors; however, a concerning number of applicants had major errors in their citations or reported articles that could not be found, despite extensive searching. Reported major and unverified publication errors are common and should cause concern for our specialty, medical schools, and our entire medical profession.

Case report: lethal fetal head injury and placental abruption in a pregnant trauma patient.

Fetal trauma in blunt abdominal trauma is uncommon, but traumatic fetal head injury is almost universally fatal to the fetus. Placental abruption is the most common injury to the gravid uterus in trauma, and when the mother survives, it is the most common cause of fetal death. The imaging diagnosis of these conditions may be difficult since there are only three cases reported in the literature of intrauterine skull fractures on plain films [3, 8, 10], ultrasound is in sensitive in the diagnosis of placental abruption [24], and the most sensitive test to diagnose placental abruption is external fetal monitoring with devices that measure uterine tone and contractility and fetal heart rate [23]. The diagnosis of fetal trauma and placental abruption may be made on contrast enhanced CT performed through the abdomen and pelvis of pregnant trauma patients. For these reasons, it is useful for the radiologist interpreting the CT scan to recognize fetal head injuries and placental abruption in pregnant trauma patients.Fig. 7 Axial scans through the bony pelvis demonstrate an unstable pelvic fracture with posterior pelvic ring disruption.There is a zone 2 fracture of the left sacrum and a fracture of the left obturator ring (arrowheads)