Date: June 2, 2008
To: Robert N. Hensinger, MD
Editor, Journal of Pediatric Orthopaedics
Re: Notification of Erratum
Our study, "Orthopaedic Injuries in Children With Nonaccidental Trauma," published in the Journal of Pediatric Orthopaedics. 2007;27(4):421-426, is an analysis of the Kids' Inpatient Database, a large, restricted-access, and publicly available data set that is maintained by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). One of the provisions of the Kids' Inpatient Database Data Use Agreement, which we signed when purchasing the data set, is that no data observation involving less than or equal to 10 observations is to be published. This measure was put in place by AHRQ to protect individual patients' privacy and to prevent the potential disclosure of personal information. In our article, there are some tabulated cells that are in violation of this provision. Numbers of observations less than or equal to 10 appear in Tables 4, 5, and 6. We have been advised that specific numbers less than or equal to 10 in these tables should be replaced with "<10" or with an asterisk (*), with a footnote indicating that the cell contains a number of less than or equal to 10. A cell with a "0" in it may stand. This error represents an oversight on our part and is an inadvertent failure to comply with the Data Use Agreement. For this, we apologize. Although we are fully confident that nothing in our article could be used to identify individuals or their personal information, the fact remains that the disclosures are in violation of the AHRQ guidelines. We are, therefore, asking the Editors of the Journal of Pediatric Orthopaedics to post a revised online version of our article that is in compliance with the AHRQ guidelines (ie, with corrected Tables 4, 5, and 6) and request that, going forward, authors cite the corrected version of our article. Please respond in writing to this request as AHRQ is requesting that we provide them with a copy of the response letter.
Thank you.
Randall T. Loder, MD
Judy R. Feinberg, PhD
