Abstract
At the request of Sage and the Journal Editor, the following article has been retracted:
Hematzadeh M, Mohammadi F, Cheragi F, et al. Effectiveness of Vanilla Aromatherapy and Orange Aromatherapy on Pain and Anxiety in Children Under Dental Procedures, Randomized Clinical Trial. Sage Open Nursing. 2026;12. https://doi.org/10.1177/23779608251412006
A reader made Sage aware of a PubPeer post discussing concerns around this article and further concerns noted by them:
• In the discussion section, there is a claim that the present study’s findings showed orange and vanilla essential oils effectively lowered subject’s pain and heart rate, improved their arterial blood oxygen saturation. However, heart rate and arterial blood oxygen saturation values were not measured in this study. • In the reporting of pain before treatment, there are implausibly high scores of pain, ranging from 9.38-9.54 on a ten-point scale. • Further, no discussion is provided on how this pain was alleviated per ethical standards. • In Table 1, the values of each study group’s age distribution, when calculating their average, equals 10. This does not parallel the average age range stated in the article’s text in the subsection “Sample Characteristics”: “The average age of children in this study was 10.87 ± 2.35 years in the vanilla aromatherapy group, 10.91 ± 2.74 years in the orange aromatherapy group, and 10.97 ± 2.54 years in the placebo group.”
Despite multiple attempts at contacting the authors for a response alongside their ethical approval document and raw data underlying this study, we did not receive a response.
Due to the data discrepancies and concerns around ethical participant care, this article has been retracted.
The authors did not respond when notified of this retraction decision.