Drug-Eluting Bead Transarterial Chemoembolization versus Conventional Transarterial Chemoembolization Both Combined Apatinib for Hepatocellular Carcinoma: A Retrospective, Propensity-Score Matched Study [Retraction]

Ouyang T, Liu J, Shi C, Zhu L, Guo X. J Hepatocell Carcinoma. 2021;8:1459–1471.

At the authors request, the Editor and Publisher of Journal of Hepatocellular Carcinoma wish to retract the published article. On review of the patient records the authors found patients who received cTACE plus apatinib treatment between Jun 2015 to Dec 2015 were not included in the study, resulting in errors in the timing of overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS) analysis. In addition, there were 10 patients in the DEB-TACE plus apatinib group who received cTACE treatment prior to receiving DEB-TACE treatment and they should have been excluded from the study. In the analysis of Treatment-Related Adverse Events, the Fisher’s test and adjusted chi-square test should have been used rather than the chi-squared test, because this was better suited to the expectations of the adverse events observed. The errors found in the methods and analysis resulted in misleading statistical results and the findings being unreliable.

The authors requested for the article to be retracted and apologise for these errors.

Our decision-making was informed by our policy on publishing ethics and integrity and the COPE guidelines on retraction.

The retracted article will remain online to maintain the scholarly record, but it will be digitally watermarked on each page as “Retracted”.

This retraction relates to this paper