An analysis of retracted studies in cardiology in the last two decades.

Background: The aim of this study is to analyze retracted studies in cardiovascular field. Methodology: PubMed and Embase databases were used to identify retracted publications from 2002 to 2022. Various characteristics of articles were retrieved, and an analysis was performed using R software. Results: We finally included 979 articles. Authors from China have the highest number of retracted studies (35.5%), followed by the USA (22.1%), and Japan (4%). The most common causes of retraction are mistakes and honest errors (24.5%) and duplicate data (17.7%). From 2002 to 2022, there has been a significant increase in retracted studies and a decrease in the impact factor of journals, number of citations, and time to retraction. Conclusion: The trend of retracting publications in cardiology is increasing.