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ESC: Hot Line Actually Only Lukewarm

By Peggy Peck, Executive Editor, MedPage Today
Published: August 29, 2010


STOCKHOLM -- Intracoronary bone marrow cell transplantation extended survival in patients with chronic heart failure due to ischemic cardiomyopathy -- that was the good news. The bad news was that the finding was not "new" at all -- it had already been published.

Late today the European Society of Cardiology said it would sanction the researcher who reported the stem cell study by barring him from presenting research at ESC congresses for two years.

The ESC guidelines for Hot Line trials specifically state that the information submitted should be new, unpublished data. Yet, the STAR trial was accepted for presentation as a Hot Line trial at the ESC annual meeting here.

When asked by MedPage Today to point out the "news" in the Hot Line presentation, STAR lead investigator Bodo-Eckehard Strauer, MD, of the Heinrich Heine University of D?sseldorf, Germany, said the news was that bone marrow cell therapy significantly improved survival in patients with chronic cardiomyopathy, which he illustrated with a slide showing a Kaplan-Meier curve -- the same graph that was published in the July issue of the European Journal of Heart Failure. Moreover, every data slide in Strauer's presentation matched the tables in the published paper.

Late today, the ESC acknowledged the breach of congress rules in a statement saying that it "acknowledges that significant information pertaining to the results of the STAR Heart Study, presented today at ESC Congress 2010 as novel had already been published prior to [the] ESC Congress."

The presentation therefore, "clearly breaks ESC rules for Hot Line Sessions, which state that information must be first presented at ESC Congresses in order to qualify for presentation in a Hot Line session."

The ESC said it was not informed of the publication before the meeting. As a result of the violation, the ESC said it would "not accept abstracts from this investigator for a period of two years."

According to information in the journal, Strauer and colleagues submitted their paper in February, revised it in April, and the journal accepted it in late April.

It should be noted that the European Journal of Heart Failure is a journal of the ESC.

Immediately after the press briefing MedPage Today asked Fausto Pinto, MD, PhD, the ESC program chair, and ESC President Roberto Ferrari, MD, why they had accepted the STAR paper as a Hot Line presentation. They said "we thought there were new data."

Ferrari then added, "We were snookered."