To the Editor:
We write regarding the recent publication of Liu et al. [1]. The technique they describe closely resembles one we described in 2002 [3]. (Figure 2 in the article by Liu et al. showing the sternal incision is similar to Figure 2 in our article.) Although Liu et al. included our publication in the list of references, they only mentioned points we discussed in our literature review and did not make appropriate reference to the surgical approach and technique we described.
In addition, their article was published previously in the 
(Orthopedic Journal of China) as 
(Surgical treatment of the spine at the cervicothoracic junction through the trans-upper-sternal approach) [2]. At that time we voiced similar concerns to the authors and editor-in-chief of that journal. The reply we received was far
from satisfactory.
We are disappointed that Liu et al. decided to publish this article a second time in an international journal without proper acknowledgement of our paper and their previously published work. Although this publication in CORR may not constitute plagiarism of their earlier article, we believe our publication should have been appropriately acknowledged in their article so readers would not be misled to believe this is a novel approach from Liu et al.
