Dr. Don Poldermans, PhD, was dismissed by the Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands on 16 November following an academic inquiry into his research methods, and now the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) is investigating clinical guidelines he worked on.
Although he resigned from the ESC Committee for Practice Guidelines last week, the committee is looking into the "Guidelines for preoperative cardiac risk assessment and preoperative cardiac management in noncardiac surgery," which Poldermans contributed to as a chairperson of the task force. The society is trying to determine if the guidelines need to be re-examined in the light of recent events, ESC said.
"ESC guidelines are based on the contributions of many European experts and on available evidence-based medicine, including many studies from different nations," the ESC stated. "They are, therefore, the result of a group discussion and not of an individual position. We are saddened by Prof. Poldermans' situation and, although we are confident that our guidelines are supported by reliable data, we are carefully looking into the[m]."
